--leading the keen-eared listener to say, his feet shuffling and head nodding whether he likes it or not, “Huh?” But there is no point in resisting; if the bass were chunkier, this could even be a Shriekback song -- it’s that catchy; and Barda continues:

the first of reciters
I saw eternal light
Best of vocal fighters
Beyond human sight
Where thorns are a teaser
I've played a double jeux
Yerushelaim at easter
I cry I pray mon dieu
I cry I pray mon dieu

-- each “mon dieu” more histrionic than the one preceding it, the Hebrew pronunciation of “Jerusalem” (“Yerushelaim”) utterly mystifying, an unsolvable riddle buried in an irresistible disco number by some people from Sweden whose ambiguous sexuality is at least 2/3 of their whole point. When the song that follows “Crucified” begins with a Bananarama-like chorus of women singing “Candy-man” and a whispering male voice replying “Messiah,” well, only the truly humorless can fail to be deeply moved by the grandeur of it all. (Not to mention that the next song, “Obsession,” is the single most accurate imitation of the Pet Shop Boys ever committed to tape.) A quick trip here proves that Army of Lovers can pull off this kind of trick practically at will -- here’s a verse from a song called “Israelism”:

Glory in the circumcision
oops there goes a Freudian slip
Army of Lovers on a mission
Forty years of desert trips
Drinking from a stinking fountain
The kabbala and Jezebel
Dancing horah on a mountain
Party like a bitch from hell