About Me
The opening lines say it all: "My name's Rikki Sylvan and these are the Last Days of Earth." And though you still don't know whether he was referring to his band, or to the end of the world, at the time it really didn't matter. So what if Sylvan's voice emulated a petulant Bryan Ferry', so what, too, if the Last Days' synth-led assault occasionally let its ambition get in the way of its abilities. Listening through what remains one of the most individual albums of 1977-1978, it's not hard to guess which one he thought he meant. The world was about to fall apart, and Rikki Sylvan was here to orchestrate Armageddon. Sylvan's vicious vision of decadence, darkness, and destruction is painted in mile-high neon. The end of the world, after all, is no time for understatement or allegory, and occasionally, the band sounds as desperate as the scenarios they're describing, a bleakness so profound that they're not even sure that they'll live long enough to even finish the record. There was nothing unequivocal about it. The best of the album is nothing less than an adrenaline rush of futuristic noise -- the instrumentals "For the Last Days," "No Wave," and the title track indisputably predetermined the course that the new wave would take at decade's end. Elsewhere, "City of the Damned," "Outcast," "Twilight Jack," and "Victimized" paint vistas of unrelenting psychopathology, a demented land of deranged loners who straddle society like a chainsaw-wielding colossus. Even "Loaded," the album's one concession to humor, sets the listener's teeth on edge as Sylvan played the role of the ultimate Nouveau Rich Kid -- and prophesied '80s yuppiedom with way too much accuracy. Of course, Four Minute Warning's antecedents bleed all over the floor. Bowie, the Velvet Underground, Roxy Music, Doctors of Madness -- anyone, in fact, who has prophesied disaster from atop a spiky, raunchy roar built on the shifting sands of angst, anger, and alienation. Later in life, Ultravox, Tubeway Army, and the Human League would take that direction to the top of the charts. But even they will admit that the Last Days came first. ~ Dave Thompson, All Music Guide
