ALEC EMPIRE INTELLIGENCE AND SACRIFICE DOUBLE ALBUM DIGITAL HARDCORE, MNW RELEASE: MAY 13, 2002 REVIEW: OCTOBER 23, 2002

I’m ashamed. I deserve to be punished in some cruel, demeaning way. I’ve hidden a masterpiece from you, my friends. But I won’t hide it any longer.
Some of you may already have guessed it, but for those of you who have waited and have led unenlightened lives, the truth is finally here; Alec Empire is a demigod. And, he can make great music even without the rest of Atari Teenage Riot. No matter a band member has died away, Alec Empire is unstoppable, transforming the grief and his personal angst and anger into a record of a kind not heard of since, well, the last time Atari Teenage Riot put something out.
This is definitely in the vein of ATR, but much more personal, less political. But not less interesting, or violent, for that matter. The songs "Everything Starts with a Fuck", "Path of Destruction" and "Addicted to You", among others, are physically painful to listen to. But, oh, so invigorating and, in their own perverted way, uplifting. It doesn’t matter that Alec saw fit to make "Intelligence and Sacrifice" into a double-CD, filling the second disc with low key noise-experiments that sounds like something - once disciple - Aphex Twin discarded as a draft.
"Intelligence and Sacrifice" is still one of the masterpieces of 2002, and I would be ashamed to leave you in the dark on that matter. The darkness of Alec Empire is a much, much better place to be.

KALLE MALMSTEDT