Including toy instruments, even the implication of toy instruments, on your recording is an iffy maneuver. For many possible listeners, toy instruments signal a fast track to the realm of too clever pop music, of Pianosaurus or the Flying Lizards. A place where everything is a touch cuter than it needs to be. Allston, Massachusetts recording artist Walter Sickert keeps us pointed on the right path, and away from cuteness, by including "army" and "broken" before the word toys. If there are toys marching along with Sickert then they're toys made in Tim Burton's Halloween Town but dropped in the wilderness between worlds where they've had their little mechanical hearts broken from loss. You can hear the snapping of tiny aortic wires and springs on this recording. Not that this is a simple or childish album. The majority of instruments on this CD are organic: acoustic guitar, piano, violins... but this isn't a quaint folk collection or overdone singer-songer writer outing. Each song is a densely layered assemblage where Sickert's voice is accompanied by sounds that seem simultaneously natural and treated. They move in and out of prominence like haywire echoes. This layering is most evocative of industrial music in the days when the actual and the sampled became interchangeable. Walter's voice is the most consistantly distorted sound on the album. That, together with the raw almost naked subject matter of love lost, is reminiscent of the early work of Nine Inch Nails. This is a man who has been damaged, broken. Being broken is the key; it implies outside influence. Sickert isn't sick, he isn't someone rotting on the inside. He's someone who's had something bad happen to him, something that took away what once made him whole. The distortion on his voice isn't a simple way for him to hide. It lets us know that we're not dealing with the surface level of the singer. That this isn't the smiling, happy mask that most broken people show as their face to the world. This is the fractured face underneath. We're only given the name of one of the broken toy army: Edrie. Her vocals arrive occasionally to counterpoint Walter's. So who makes up the rest of the shattered plaything parade? Walter. When you listen to this album all of those ghosts that dart among the trees, all those grinding whispers that echo, all those stepped-on soldiers.. they're all Walter. They're all trying to transform themselves back into a whole that someone wants to play with.

Northeast Performer Magazine) December Issue Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys .. Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys All songs written and recorded by Walter Sickert Additional vocals by Edrie Mastered by Dana J. White On the self-titled debut from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys, what is described as death-folk proves to be indeed dark, but with a softer side to draw in anyone who has ever had their heart ripped out and stomped all over. After one listen, it is obvious that Walter Sickert and Edrie, a broken toy, have been performing for a good amount of time. Apparent influences abound, including electronic, goth, metal, experimental, rock and even country. More than anything, however, this album is driven by past experiences and an organic industrial sound. The album is very well organized and certainly contains a profound artistic quality. Opening with ..The Negative Heart Society.. gives the listener the idea that Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys really are shattered and destroyed. The song literally tears itself apart over issues of heartbreak, with the words and music working in seemingly accidental tandem. The group continues to amuse through ..Sacrilege,.. nearly putting the listener in a trance as the music fades in and out. It is complemented nicely by the following track, ..Lows,.. which, like it sounds, is a somewhat bipolar experience where the listeners feel as though they are chasing after some fictitious white rabbit. With the lyrics, ..Love is not true.. repeating themselves, ..La Divorce.. mimics a literal split. The quick rhythms and honest lyrics force the listener to step back and think about their own definition of love. And when one has come to believe that love may indeed be lost, Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys prove that more loss can exist than ever thought imaginable through ..The Long Wait... The song drags out as if waiting for an eventuality, as if one were stuck in the waiting room at the doctor..s office when disease seems to be pretty much taking over. This album is dark and leaves the listener with a profound sadness. ..Strange how summer..s turning into fall/I wait for you/but you never call,.. is sung while hovering over broken toys that are barely functioning, but the words make for a more than interesting background. Ending the album with ..Hell Holds,.. the group digs deeper into shadowy territory, addressing loneliness and torture. It strikes upon the sensation that a loved one will never be able to get passed his or her anguish over a breakup and instead turns to revenge. All the instruments in the background, however, seem fairly pleasant, giving a carnival-sound to this merry-go-round of feelings that the main character of this song and album has been carrying throughout the day. (Self-released) -Kristine Catalogna

The Wire Written by Jon Nolan Wednesday, 11 October 2006 Though you shouldn't judge a book, or a CD, by its cover, the packaging on the eponymous release from the Allston, Mass., based Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys gives fair warning to those who would enter their musical world. A heavily mascara painted doll head stares out from the CD case. Its face is nearly obscured by a bunch of feathers, a rose, a brass key (glued to its forehead) and most noticeably, a squid. Yikes. Sickert's maniacal vocals cut through the mayhem of "The Negative Hearts Society," a song with an almost Middle Eastern or tribal rhythm. "You left my heart in pieces," Sickert wails on the track. Even the dreamy ambient numbers like "Sacrilege" dip into more nightmarish territory as Sickert's vocals, which are nearly always distorted, ebb and flow under the beauty. Ham radio static, reverb drenched piano, sinister synth line and Sickert's sidekick Edrie's creepy vocals make for a kind of Nine-Inch-Nails-does-Goth folk ride.

(INDIE-PRO on Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys) Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys has been described as ..a combination of Jack the Ripper and Throbbing Gristle.., whose music explores life without love in a doll-filled fantasy sure to break hearts and expand minds. Delivering musical alchemy in the form of death-folk, texture-core, and an overall organic industrial listening experience, Walter Sickert is a musical portrait of soiled childhood dreams, degradation, murder, and all man..s hidden thoughts. Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys offers an eclectic and original sound, combining samples, standard and nonstandard instrumentation in a seemingly haphazard manner, but totally premeditated at the same time.