Vampire Rodents’s Lullaby Land is brutish, misanthropic industrial in the vein of Skinny Puppy. In fact, Lullaby Land has a lot specifically in common with Skinny Puppy, most noticeably in Anton Rathausen’s sinister gremlin-like vocals that sound almost identical to Kevin Ogilvie’s style. For one last comparison, Lullaby Land sets up the same kind of bleak and tortured slave-driven societal complex scene that Last Rights expresses so well in all its horror and hopelessness.

On its own merits, Lullaby Land is a very fuzzy sounding lo-fi affair, a possibly deliberate production choice that makes the music’s world more dirty, unbecoming, and scary – a kind of environment you’d definitely want to stay away from for your own good. That kind of intensity is clearly a large part of what Vampire Rodents want you to feel; however, the murky production also undersells the band’s pummeling beat-hooks and shredding guitar riffs which are what should make you want to embrace and brave this otherwise combative world.

Also notable are the band’s unusual inclusion of classical string instruments such as the cello and violin on some tracks. Instruments with a history of being known for producing some of the world’s most pleasant and pleasurable music may seem ill-fitting for such a violent atmosphere, but Vampire Rodents make them fit in perfectly every time by playing the strings so sharply that they too sound like screeching metal and violent machinery that you shouldn’t risk getting close to.

Lullaby Land is not just an obvious product of its time due to the clear angst and disgust being portrayed in the repulsive guitar riffs and distasteful vocals that are common with early 90s alternative rock and metal, but also in its common desire of many bands of the decade to make a 70-minute album seemingly for the sole purpose of filling the entire running time of a CD. Even an album as surprisingly consistent in its assault as Lullaby Land can drag on and bore the listener – especially in a genre known for using repetition to create a feeling of oppression, which Vampire Rodents certainly indulge in.

Lullaby Land knows what its going for and mostly does it well, even though the production often cripples its offense, and said offense begins to weaken further after wearing itself out for 70 minutes with little innovation until the last 15 minutes where the band’s classical and ambient influences come to a head and distill themselves, letting the album bow out surprisingly gently and gracefully. Regardless of its flaws, Lullaby Land is a good industrial album that I would recommend to any fan of the genre, but it’s not too exemplary for its own genre or innovative enough for me to recommend it to anyone unconverted to industrial music to see what it can offer and at its best. It took Last Rights 20 less minutes to show you their world, and with their better songwriting and more captivating hooks they actually managed to make their depraved vision look desirable. That’s when you know an industrial album has defeated you and won you over.