'By All Means' is a new CD by Gordon Lazarus, also known as U-731, and Malignant Records. Released in February of this year, Lazarus is joined on this album by Andy Grant of Vomit Arsonist fame and John Stillings of Steel Hook Prosthesis. The result is a strongly drawn image of the power of totalitarianism as seen through the bleak lens industrial strength noise, distortion, menacing drones and spoken words from the speeches of historic personalities. The opening track, 'Forced Neurotic Displacement,' immediately sets the tone with the low drone of propeller-driven bombers heard slowly approaching and then passing directly overhead. A distorted voice is heard shouting out harsh commands amid the sound of explosions. There is the feeling of unstoppable violence and even the sound of the WWII-vintage aircraft is made more menacingly relevant by the high distortion ' it is as if we are looking back through the mist of time to experience the horror and none of the nostalgia. Track 7, 'Suo Gan/Last Rights,' is similar and incorporates the speech by Chamberlain announcing the beginning of the war over the invasion of Poland in 1939. This is accompanied by what sounds like a flight line of departing bombers. As the speech concludes there is the somber sound of women singing amid explosions and this evokes a very sad feeling ' the failure of civilization and the descent into total war. In the title track, By All Means, we hear the voice of Churchill, explaining the evacuation of Dunkirk, is interwoven with a speech by Adolf Hitler. The continuous buzzing drone establishes a kind of blurry equivalence between the two and there is the uncomfortable sense that we have inherited the evil which we sought to destroy. The historical theme continues into the 1960s with track 4, 'Aktion - Freedom Reaktion Resistance.' Here a cold war speech by John F. Kennedy is submerged in a sinister whirring roar that effectively translates the old fears of communist totalitarianism into a unsettling parallel to our present broken political system and reduced civil liberties. Perhaps the most effective track on the album is 'F.E.M.A. Care' where a female voice describes how certain present-day railway facilities have been changed in camps. There is a loud whirring, like some giant machine, accompanied by static so that not all the words are intelligible. But you catch bits and pieces: 'the war on drugs' morphs into 'prisons' that morph into 'concentration camps with gas furnaces.' Another voice is heard and the words 'CIA', 'martial law' and 'concentration camps' are repeated. Your mind begins to connect the dots and this produces a bleak vision of the future that is equally frightening and compelling. There are other tracks on this CD that use the same techniques, 'The Mechanics of Embalming' and 'Asphyxiant Collapse,' but these don't have the political punch of the others and come off as weaker by comparison. 'By All Means' is at its best when dealing with the history of totalitarianism and is an excellent illustration of the proverb that you must choose your enemies carefully because in achieving victory you will become them.