Embroydead, an album by Wumpscut was first released in Germany in early 1997 on Rudy Ratzinger's label, Beton Kopf media, and was released by Metropolis records in the U.S. later that year, along with almost all of Wumpscut's prior albums. It's abbreviated as "E†" several times within the album's liner notes.
Embryodead is something of a concept album, although if there is one uniting theme to the album, it is despair. It opens grimly enough, with a song about Christ's crucifixion, bringing up the idea that even He was destined for painful death, and moves right on into the song that outright describes the message of the album: "Don't attempt to exist in this world full of hate." It's better to not be born, or to die right away, than to have to experience all the pain that all people must in their life, Rudy tells us. Why? Because we're doomed, we're controlled by some malevolent God or devil, and it's everyone's destiny to lose what they love and then their own life. It's certainly a bleak outlook, and Rudy only knows if he even believed it when he wrote these songs - I certainly can't agree with it. Maybe he did believe it at the time, although it seems strange that someone thinking that life was so meaningless and unbearable would even take the effort to write and record music. On the other hand, maybe he just went for the most depressing message possible, for the Goth music street cred. In any case, it's not all negative; Angel has as somber a tone as the rest of the album, but its message is "if you love somebody, set them free".
E† is dedicated to all foetus acting wisely enough to die in their mother's womb before they could be thrown into this cruel world full of blind hate. May they never know how hard it is to live without any reason, without any sense.. -From the liner.
Tracks are as follows:
- Golgotha
- Embryodead
- Down Where We Belong
- Slave To Evil
- War (Krieg)
- Is It You
- Pest
- Womb
- Angel
- Stillbirth
Godling hasn't noded the album after 7 months, so
I did.