Monthly Archives: February 2003

Allied Vision “MMBO”

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Posted by admin on February 27, 2003 – 1:12 pm
Filed under Reviews - Music

ALLIED VISION
“MMBO”
(4/5)

 

 

 

 

Allied vision returns with their second album, MMBO (Man Must Be Overcome). After around four years of dealing with problems with labels, you would think it was enough for Oscar Storm to give it up. But no, he continued to push the musical envelope and do what he does best. Allied Vision returns from the ashes to show one of the most brutal EBM album ever produced in my opinion: MMBO.

The album kicks off with “Transition.” Militant industrial beats and some severely warped vocals feed this apocalyptic industrialfest. “Transition” is a perfect opener; it shows off the supreme nightmarish ability of this ebm act. The production on “Transition” is very dense. A lot of backround noises and things are added; though the sounds are not all that clear, somehow they work perfectly. Allied Vision shows us that modern EBM ain’t all techno.

The second song, “Ghosts Behind Hate,” starts with a more danceable cyber techno sound. “Ghosts Behind Hate” is reminiscent of Front Line Assembly with its catchy breaks, distorted mechanical vocals and fast driving beat.

Then my personal favourite kicks in, “Confession Of Dementia.” Just when you think Allied Vision has gone techno on us, “Confession Of Dementia” is the heaviest demonic EBM I have ever heard. It leaves you feeling like your soul has been stripped away! It also puts you in the soul of a machine itself, feeding you with its nightmarish visions of the future. And we love it! The vocals are terrifying and highly processed. The deep orchestral strings hit where it hurts. “Confession Of Dementia” doesn’t stop until it has suceeded in breaking you. Highly nightmarish, slow and brutal.

“Embodied Scew” is very funky and hard hitting at the same time—A good one for the dance floors with its driven punishing basslines. Like the previous songs, it has that very dense and brutal sound typical to Allied Vision.

Next up is “Blasphemous.” After a minute or so, that song delivers a car crusher vocal effect and severely militaristic heavy EBM, which sounds like it would suit some futuristic war movies.

“Back To Ashes” is like a faster version of “Confession Of Dementia,” only that it hits harder. And the vocals are a bit more processed, too. It builds up until it reaches its uplifting climax and then the mood is completely changed. It almost goes trance, were it not for the terryfying vocals and backround noise. A very good track.

The album starts to go downhill a little with the next two tracks, which aren’t anything special, yet are still good hard EBM if you like FLA Caustic Grip era. After those two tracks, “Last Wave” starts. Begining with some fantastic spooky synths and a considerable amount of distortion, “Last Wave” intensily builds into a doom trip. By “doom trip,” I refer to this old 1990′s computer game, Doom, because this track heavilly reminds me of it: very sci-fi, very hellish, fast driving and exhilarating.

MMBO finishes with “Hidden,” which breaks away from the new-breed EBM mold. “Hidden” delivers a dark ambient trip from cyber-hell itself. Samples from horror movies fuel that 4 minutes or so last track of dark ambience until a beat starts to appear. Then the song builds up in to a dark twisted industrial track, which nicely ends this relentless and intense album.

If MMBO is what the apocalypse will bring, then man really is overcome. My personal all-time favourite and one of the best EBM album to come out in a long time.

Hail the new breed!

Allied Vision consists of: Oscar Storm.

The tracks on MMBO are :
1. Transition
2. Ghosts behind hate
3. Confession of dementia
4. Embodied screw
5. Blasphemous
6. Back to ashes
7. Symbolic schism
8. Revolted generator
9. Last wave
10. Hidden

Review by;
Cyrax

Dive “True Lies”

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Posted by admin on February 22, 2003 – 1:19 pm
Filed under Reviews - Music

Dive
“True Lies”
(4/5)
(1999)

Since his departure from Klinik in 1991, Dirk Ivens hasn’t flooded the market with many releases. Quite the contrary, this living legend of Industrial has been rather quiet, busy as he was with his own label (Daft). Each new album is obviously in itself an event. And when True Lies came out, I was pretty anxious to discover what this dark electromancer had in store for us.

True Lies will rejoice the early Klinik fans for its oldschool approach to electronics: minimal instrumentation, simple melodies, discrete synth lines, pounding drums, and heavily overdriven vocals. The album is dark, moody, grinding, clinical… haunting! But far from being a retro album, this CD is definitely modern sounding with its hybrid elements taken from various electronic genres. To tell the truth, True Lies is an updated version of the early Klinik, only with a greater amount of distortion applied to the drums and the presence of screeching noises. Dirk hasn’t aged a bit. He looks like he’s still got some tricks up his sleeves.

True Lies kicks off with “True Lies one,” an insanely distorted bassdrum driven track with a straight snare beat. Dirk Ivens’ singing technique is strinkingly similar to the one he used in the 80′s, especially in “Black Leather”. The first notes make you wonder if Dive is a powernoise band.

“Sidewalk Sinner,” on the other hand, is more EBM sounding with a greatly simple synth melody, shy pad and discrete drum beats. The screeching noise in the chorus is a nice addition.

“Breathing” is industrial to the core with its brooding bassline and treated hihats. The drones really add to the general atmosphere of the song.

“Give Me It” has a dark techno feel with its bleeping noises and distorted bassdrum/cymbals concerto. The powernoise screechings are back.

“Two Faced Man” is a minimalist hardcore monument; a distorted jungle bassdrum-driven song with a duet of screeching noises.

“Be Yourself” is almost an early Skinny Puppy cover with Dirk’s less distorted doubled chorused vocals and gothy synth pad. This beat-driven oldschool EBM sound reminds the listener of the mid-80s.

“Dreamhunter” is another one that will remind the listener of early Klinik. The vocal overdub on Dirk’s voice gives you the impression that this song is a duet. But there is no mention of guess vocalist appearance in the CD booklet. Therefore, I presume that the deep voice following Dirk’s usually distorted voice is… Dirk’s!

“Voodoo Child” is almost the best of the whole album. All the elements are gathered in this song: bleeping / screeching noises, EBM drums, hardcore bassdrums (though only in the intro), delayed + reverbed + distortioned vocals, and oldschool minimalist synth melody. This song sums up the album perfectly.

“Are You Awake?” Another Klinik-sounding track, and another Dirk duet with himself, pretty close to the other ones. Very 80′s with some nods to the past.

“True Lies two” is a reprise of the opening track. This time, no powernoise feelings. This song is an hybrid of hard electro, industrial, dark techno and oldschool. A nice ending that leaves you gasping for more.

The only major complaint one can formulate about True Lies is its shortness: only 38:32! And maybe the impression that Dirk Ivens lacked variations in his music. But hey, that’s what minimalist industrial is all about, and what has made Klinik stand apart from the crowd in the past! Either you like the style or you loathe it completely. Personally, I do think Dive did a great job with True Lies and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to any serious rivethead.

Dive consists of : Dirk Ivens, with guess appearance of Ivan Iusco (on tracks 3 / 7 / 8 / 10).

The tracks on True Lies are:
1. True Lies one
2. Sidewalk Sinner
3. Breathing
4. Give It To Me
5. Two Faced Man
6. Be Yourself
7. Dreamhunter
8. Voodoo Child
9. Are You Awake ?
10. True Lies two

Review by;
theGrey

Mysticum “In The Streams Of Inferno”

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Posted by admin on February 17, 2003 – 1:24 pm
Filed under Reviews - Music

Mysticum
“In The Streams Of Inferno”
(1/5)
(1998)

This disc starts off slowly and a little too quietly with Industries of Inferno. In fact, at first I had to question whether my CD player was working properly. However, this serves well to make the loud, piercing, screaming track The Rest quite a surprise.

Unfortunately, this is not necessarily a pleasant surprise. Sloppy death metal to an electronic beat was not exactly what I had expected. However, having never heard of this Norwegian group I had absolutely no idea what to expect.

If you take the worst aspects of bad death metal and tack on some bland electronic beats, you have Mysticum. As is typical of this sort of music, the singer sounds like he is trying to sing with a slit throat, gargling with his own blood. The recording quality is also fairly bad and I think this was recorded live from inside the tank of the guitarist’s toilet. I don’t have anything against low-grade metal mind you, but being stabbed in the ears like this more than once could easily make me reconsider.

In fact, here is a direct quote from their website: “Their art of music can be described as a thick wall of mental sonic, immoral energy. Which you will find very pleasurable after hearing it a couple of times. This is music which will strengthen your hate and let you enjoy cruelty.” I’ll have to take their word on it, because I was physically unable to listen to it “a couple of times”, but I do understand how listening to something so horrid would strengthen one’s hate and let them enjoy cruelty.

Some would call this “industrial black metal”. I think that this disc merits the creation of a new genre, “Bloody Electronic Ass Metal”. The whole time, I was waiting and hoping in anticipation for it to stop sucking for at least one song, but I was let down. I was let down hard. The only track that isn’t completely abysmal is “Where The Raven Flies”, which disguises itself as a simplistic ambient synth track until about a minute and a half into it where it gets absolutely retarded and unlistenable just like the rest of the disc.

I would highly not recommend this to anyone with a working set of ears.

Mysticum consist of : a bunch of norwegian clowns !

The tracks on In The Streams Of Inferno are:
1. Industries of Inferno
2. The Rest
3. Let The Kingdom Come
4. Wintermass
5. Where The Raven Flies
6. Crypt of Fear
7. In Your Grave
8. In The Last Of The Ruins We Search For A New Planet

Review by;
Xangis

Suicide Commando “Mindstrip”

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Posted by admin on February 17, 2003 – 12:12 pm
Filed under Reviews - Music

Suicide Commando — Mindstrip (2000)
(3/5)

What inspired me to check out this disc ? Nothing other than the interesting name and song titles. Oh yeah, and the fact that I have this overwhelming need to check out everything I possibly can. In this case my overall reaction to Johan Van Roy’s Belgian project was indifference.

The sample quality of Jesus Wept is fairly low. Yeah, industrial is supposed to sound dirty and noisy, but there’s a difference between noisy and low-quality. I like distorted vocals. Most industrial takes a few listens to really understand what the hell they’re saying. Suicide Commando may have taken it half a notch too far into the unintelligible range.

Hellraiser starts off with a great synth sound until it turns into techno. By this time I was beginning to think this was a techno or synthpop group that had picked up a distortion pedal at a pawn shop. I will say the actual sounds used in this song are quite cool and the vocal quality is a bit better than Jesus Wept.

The techno-esque extravaganza continued with Body Count Proceed. The drone synth sound made me feel like I was having a hole drilled in my skull. In a bad way. Even so, the beat was rather contagious and I couldn’t help but tap my appendages on the nearest solid surface. Since I was at work I had to keep it to a minimum. Can’t have the boss walking in while you’re tapping your schlong on the monitor, you know. That’s more explaining that I’d care to do.

By the time I reached Raise Your God, something was starting to bug me about the whole Suicide Commando formula. Yet again it was an average song that didn’t particularly stand out for me. It wasn’t something I loved nor was it something I hated.

I can honestly sum up the rest of the disc fairly easily. Just like the first few songs. Nothing that stands out as overly good or bad though I would say that Comatose Delusion is the best song on the disc and Blood In Face came the closest to trying my patience. Although this is nothing but your run of the mill industrial, it is decent overall. Anything’s better than Paula Spears or Britney Abdul or whatever they’re calling that pseudo-musical abomination now. Will I see them live if they come around? Yes. Will I tell all my friends to pick up this disc? No.

Suicide Commando sounds a remarkably large amount like Velvet Acid Christ, and if you like them you might as well pick this up. Overall the music isn’t terribly creative and more follows the EBM/industrial “formula”, obviously influenced by their tour with Velvet Acid Christ, though Suicide Commando doesn’t do it as well. It’s a shame how things have gone downhill since the moniker of “industrial” came into being. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the stuff, but I remember the days when I would pick up a new disc and wouldn’t be able to stop listening to it for a month – it grabbed me by the tender parts and shook me around a bit. Nowadays I’m lucky if I can even get new music to pinch my ass.

Oh please will someone recommend a damned disc that’ll surprise me?

Suicide Commando consists of Johan Van Roy : vocals, lyrics, synths, samples.

The tracks on Mindstrip are:
1- Jesus Wept
2- Hellraiser (Psychopath 01 – Version)
3- Body Count Proceed
4- Raise Your God
5- Mindstripper
6- Run
7- Comatose Delusion (Overdose Shot Two)
8- Blood In Face
9- Love Breeds Suicide
10- Slaves

Review by;
Xangis