The following is an excerpt from the advice column of Mr. Dennis Lyxzen, singer of The (International) Noise Conspiracy, translated from Swedish:

Dear Mr. Lyxzen,
I have bad corns on my feet. I have tried all the recommended creams, medicines, and even acupuncture. These corns scare my children and keep up my wife at night. If they don't get better, she is going to leave me. How do I get rid of them? Help. Axel, Axvall

Dear Axel,
These "corns" on your feet serve as a microcosm of the tools the ruling elite use to destroy the potential of the proletariat artist. They are a testament to the fact that the ordinary worker suffers at the hands of the elite's brutish corporations. Stop sustaining the system! Liberate yourself from societal boundaries and you shall truly be free. Solidarity. Dennis

Dear Mr. Lyxzen,
Your singing for the Refused was rad. My friends and me thought all that political talk was so neat. I even went to the mall to buy an anarchy patch. It was expensive, but so worth it! Anyway, is your new band as cool as the Refused? I hope so because you rule! Erik, Saltsjo-Boo

Dear Erik,
Music is nothing but an abstraction of an old and dull idea of bourgeois self-realization, the self-made success of the creative artist, thus leaving the rest to choke in the dust, settled to consume "creativity" in a boring package. Dennis

Whoa! Did I just see what I think I saw? The last response you read was not a pathetic attempt by the author to belittle the (International) Noise Conspiracy and their politics; rather, it actually appears verbatim in the liner notes of Survival Sickness. The irony is, this album all but defines the "boring package" the Conspiracy is so adamant in destroying.

Musically, the Noise Conspiracy seems content to rehash the mod sound into the same predictable ruts and and chord progressions honed by countless others. "The Reproduction of Death" and "Smash It Up" plead to be anything by the Make-Up. How revolutionary is a band that constantly retreats into standard verse/chorus routine? Oh, wait, I must be wrong since "the lyrics all have to fit into the limits of the song, thus making them objects to issues like rhythm, rhyme and length, making the words one-dimensional and hallow of sorts."

This kind of excuse is a thumb-in-the-eye of all musical innovation. Just because these guys haven't created their own unique sound doesn't mean they should downplay the accomplishments of others. Have they heard the latest from Modest Mouse? Does the name Radiohead ring a bell? If you enjoy the pedantic babbling of some pseudo-intellectual anarchist know-it-alls, consider this album your new bible. The rest of us will wait for something better.

-Adam Ohler