Laurent Garnier - La Home Box

F Communications: 2015

It’s been a long time since Laurent Garnier’s released a new album, and we’re technically still waiting on that too. La Home Box is more a gathering of various singles he produced throughout 2014, with a few additional unreleased items rounding things out to LP length. This has given it a ‘compilation’ label from most, but listen, son, that shit wouldn’t fly back in the day. Hell, when Monsieur Garnier first made his mark in the world of techno music, a dance album was just a bunch of prior singles lumped in with a few unreleased items. That makes La Home Box a retro album! Ain’t nothing old-school about the deluxe box set version though. Four slabs of wax, each a different color, with extra tracks not included with the CD (ten minute long Drifting In Midwaters, ten minute long Confused, additional remixes of a few tunes), all bundled within a pizza box. Hot damn, that’s going to bat for the Black Crack collectors out there. Makes getting the lone piddling CD kinda’ lame, but what need have I for all that vinyl? Besides, I get two versions of The Rise & Fall Of The Donkey Dog, so “haha!” on you, vinyl enthusiasts. Wait, the CD’s also included in that quantum singularity box set? Well, fu

Whether you’re thrilled or disappointed that La Home Box isn’t a new album-proper from Mr. Garnier will likely depend on what you expect out of his music. Say what you want about his adventures into genres unexplored, but you cannot deny he has big French balls indulging his musical kleptomania, turning away those who just want more techno weapons in their arsenal. They like Man With The Red Face, but going full jazz? Not so much.

Such folks should then be pleased with La Home Box, as it’s a no-nonsense affair of various dancefloor tools, artistic indulgences be damned. I mean, what else could it be, given this is a ‘compilation’ of scattered singles, where leftfield genre dalliances just aren’t done (save the occasional B2-side). Instead we stick to the thumping heads-down techno (Psyche-Delia, I’m Going Home, M.I.L.F.), the Afro-beat techno (Boom (Chakalok) (Traumer African Remix)), the “techno with some house elements but not quite tech-house” techno (Enchanté, Bang (The Underground Doesn’t Stop)), and the “this is not techno, it’s deep house, you goof” techno (And The Party Goes On). Interestingly, though hardly surprising, the CD exclusive cuts find Mr. Garnier bucking the techno in favor of something different. The Rise & Fall Of The Donkey Dog has something of an electro-rock build going for it, while the Husbands Remix does the French chill-pop thing you’d expect of AIR and the like. Oh, and Revenge Of The Lol Cat sounds like Garnier having a pisstake with epic G-funk boogie. LOL indeed.

So overall a satisfying collection of tunes from ol’ Laurent – his craftsmanship around an escalating techno groove remains as sharp as ever. Wouldn’t mind a real album for his next outing though.

Various - Journeys By DJ: Coldcut - 70 Minutes Of Madness

Music Unites/Journeys By DJ™ LLC: 1995/2002

It’s rare that a DJ mix series is hijacked by a contributor to such a degree, they become solely associated with it. For sure you have game changers, as James Holden and Joris Voorn did with the Balance series. Or some jocks become synonymous with a series due to endless entries into its canon (the forever Nick Warren & Deep Dish show that Global Underground became). Journeys By DJ already had six volumes under its belt by the time Coldcut came along with their seventy minutes of madness, including entries from John Digweed, Paul Oakenfold, DJ Rap, and Danny Rampling. Heck, even Judge Jules beat More and Black to the “30+ Tracks Set” when he put out his mix for the series. Yet these days everyone always assumes Journeys By DJ was a Coldcut one-off, future entries by Gilles Peterson and Jay Chappell even less remarked upon. So impactful was this mix, that it alone received the re-issue treatment in 2002. Oh come on, Billy Nasty’s set wasn’t bad, was it?

Still, you can’t knock the result, 70 Minutes Of Madness easily earning its Classic Status as a DJ mix CD for the ages. They didn’t just rinse out a pile of similar tunes, but studio-mashed tons of disparate sounds, styles, and genres into a megamix of their super-deep crates. Junior Reed hangin’ with Newcleus! Harold Budd pallin’ about with Photek! Plastikman getting funky with Jedi Knights! Air Liquide trippin’ balls with Bob Holroyd! The Dr. Who theme just being all awesome-sauce no matter who’s around it (Red Snapper, The Sabres Of Paradise, and Jimmy Cauty, if you must know). Not to mention a shit-ton of breaks, beats, pieces, scratching, cross-cutting, and acapella action littered throughout. Coldcut were already regarded as masters of the one-n-two, but typically translated their skill into producing DJ tools and sample-heavy songs. This was the first time they got into the studio for a commercial mix CD showcasing their DJ trade – well, second, if you count Tone Tales From Tomorrow a year prior – knocking it out of the park so hard, they practically abandoned this particular market forever after. A shame, as I’d love to hear what another 70 Minutes Of Madness might entail with over two decades worth of gathered new weapons within their coffers.

Possibly the most outrageous thing about this set is how it bucks conventional set construction. The opening salvo including The Truper (Photek), Wagon Christ, and Funki Porcini (with Dillinja on the rub) features some of the most frenetic ragga jungle you’d ever hear in 1995, all within the first ten minutes! You’d think the set could only go down in energy from there, but tons of acid, funk, and breakin’ action maintain an even keel for the most part. Even with sporadic downtime throughout this set, Coldcut never lose the plot, coming back with a new avenue of music to explore. Throw in a final forty seconds of the needle riding out the last record grooves? Yeah, vinyl bliss.

Sash! - It's My Life (Special Edition)

Scandinavian Records: 1997

I got this for a dime. That alone is worth the price of admission for Ecuador, one of my all-time guilty pleasure anthems. And surely there’s something else across two CDs of Sash! music that will make my commitment of 0.10 Canadian dollars practical. Surely a better investment than getting the single, which features all the same remixes found in this special edition of It’s My Life. Two extra tracks of decent euro dance fluff, and I’ll have gotten plenty return on my 1.40 peso expense.

Eh, who exactly is Sash!, you ask? Oh come on, you know who these guys are. Even if you somehow missed the late ‘90s club boom, you’ve heard their tracks, or similar knockoffs of their sound. Really, Sash! was something of a knockoff themselves, aping the pluck-heavy riffs Rollo perfected with Faithless for their own use, as did many producers at the time. It was Sash!, however, that had the most commercial success with them, in large part thanks to aggressive marketing and licensing of their big hits off here (Ecuador, Encore Une Fois, Stay, and all those Future Breeze remixes), such to the point they’re the default association with plucking synth club anthems. And while the group has carried on in the commercial world to this day, nothing has replicated the undeniable impact Sash! generated prior to the turn of the millennium. Soccer highlight reels would never be the same.

But it all started somewhere, and that somewhere is their debut album It’s My Life, of which I spent six pence upon (and dropping!). A few versions with different track arrangements are floating about, but mine doesn’t waste your time, dropping the three main anthems in your lap right out the gate. The titular opener features the sounds you’d expect of Sash! (synth plucks, mild acid, standard euro club beat, looping vocal), but subdued compared to their heavy hitters. Encore Une Fois did much better, especially the trancy Future Breeze rub, but I’ve long been ambivalent to this hit – 2 Lips’ Je T’Aime did the same thing better anyway. Following that is Ecuador, and good luck getting that killer piano earworm and Sabine Ohmes’ glorious shouting out of your head for the rest of the day! (“Eh-QUAY-DORa!”)

As for the rest, you get a few club track retreads (MightyBreak, Cheating Twister, Sweat), a euro pop cut that I don’t remember but had a ton of remixes (Stay), and The Final Pizzi, another big epic pluck-anthem I thought was made by someone else. Hell, maybe it is, but I’m too stupid to recall who (they all kinda’ sound the same anyway). There’s also Hoopstar, a collaboration with d’n’b act Nonex, and sounding completely daft on an album like this as a result. Haha, now that’s worth the 0.51 Chinese yen spent.

Not that bonus remix CD though. A couple agreeable trance and house rubs of Stay aside, this one’s complete rubbish. It’s got Armand Van Helden doing speed garage, for God’s sake! Ugh…

Perturbator - I Am The Night

Blood Music: 2012/2015

The second album from Perturbator, and the dawning realization he could take his hot synthwave action out of the slummy homage backstreets, and into the brazen neon-glow of concept LPs. It wasn’t long either, I Am The Night coming out the same year as his debut full-length Terror 404. Throw in an additional three EPs, and you’re looking at one highly fruitful 2012 for Mr. Kent, further remarkable considering a lot of this was self-released. Strong buzz generated more than enough demand for something physical though, and Blood Music keeps coming through in latex-covered spades (um, ew?). This album saw two vinyl represses in 2015, plus another one this year, not to mention the various limited edition cassette versions. Oh, and a digipak CD as well. Yay! Kinda’ makes this either woefully neglected, or ridiculously scarce. Hey, remember when tapes held that status? Fun times.

While the idea of Perturbator as a night driving avenger first appeared in the Night Driving Avenger single, it fully crystallizes here with I Am The Night. There’s a world inside Mr. Kent’s mind, one he must release from his imagination and sent free-wheeling into your earholes and brain matter. Where the future is near, the streets are crime, and the rulers are wicked. Fortunately for the uninitiated, this album does offer a few pieces of dialog helping set the stage for Perturbator’s retro future-shock vision, including an opening piece called The New Black that sounds like it was cribbed from Robocop. It’s in fact Network, a 1976 movie that rather accurately predicted the cable news of this dire year of 2016. Say, just how far into the future did Perturbator intend these synthwave chronicles to be?

I Am The Night isn’t quite as focused on a specific narrative as future Perturbator records are, but it more than makes up for it in variety of tuneage. This is easily the most melodic of all his albums I’ve thus far reviewed, with shimmering synths aplenty throughout. Eclipse has a scorcher of a soaring riff, the titular cut sounds like it aped the ‘twinkle prog’ synths for a track wonderfully contrasted with a thumping low end, and Deviance with Arcade High is all kinds of retro chipper. Then there’s the pure synth-pop songs - ballads like Naked Tongues and Desire featuring vocalists, or beatless instrumental pieces like interlude Nexus Six and closer The Price Of Failure benefiting an actual movie for these to score. Throw in your mint pulse-pounding Perturbator cuts like Retrogenesis, Technoir, and Raining Steel, and you’ve got solid album covering all your synthwave needs.

If that’s still not enough, a few bonus tracks at the end round things out, including a collaboration with Dynatron in Volcanic Machinery - it’s surprisingly not as moody as you’d expect of these two working together. Meanwhile, Lilith’s rhythm almost sounds like futurepop (ooh, think of that pairing!), while slow-jam Girl In A Black Dress features a digital saxophone. Surprisingly comes off better than most saxophone recordings from the ‘80s.

Cities Last Broadcast - The Humming Tapes

Cryo Chamber: 2016

And finally I get to that oldest of dark ambient schools, the post-industrial class. Actually, calling it ‘post’ isn’t entirely accurate, this stuff developing almost concurrently with the warped sound experiments of early industrial. Once dark ambient started finding different ways of exploring the macabre side of drone though, its shared approach to the craft with traditional ambient dragged it out of the industrial scene into its own thing. Now you’ve got so many different styles of dark ambient, you’d almost need a Music Guide detailing it all; or not, this particular scene not as anal retentive about sub-genre purity as so many other electronic music scenes. For sure one could, if anything to help unsuspecting explorers differentiate from ‘space soul-crush’ from ‘urban decay doomcore’ from ‘Hell Dimension sadstep’ from ‘rainbow-sparkle drone’ (it’s an ironic micro-genre). But it’s not necessary, dark ambient connoisseurs content within their own interests, though perhaps with a shared smirk towards those who fear treading within.

Cities Last Broadcast, or Pär Boström to the Swedish Illuminati Division, has floated about the dark ambient scene for a while now. He’s probably better off known as Kammarheit, a project trending towards the reflective, melancholy side of dark ambient, and didn’t offer much exploration of unique recording methods. As an alias like Cities Last Broadcast though, you’re practically mandated to indulge industrial’s aesthetic of metropolitan decay. Crackling tape recordings, rusted grind of neglected machinery, billowing wind through burnt husks of buildings, warped records of a fallen culture - all that good stuff. For sure I’ve dealt with the post-apocalypse setting before, but most of those feature times significantly past the fall of Man, and often still using contemporary studio gear for recording. The Humming Tapes places us about as close to the initial action I’ve come across yet, feeling more like a Final Days Of A Victorian War than dealing with the after affects.

Well, the setting makes sense, given the crackling, droning analog tone that permeates this album. The actual content, however, focuses on the practice of séance, where a group of people sit together to communicate with spirits, a rather popular activity during the Victorian Era. Even Houdini getting in on that action, and grainy photographs of the sessions helped perpetuate the myth, but most séance mediums were considered frauds or hoaxes. Whether real or fake, The Humming Tapes presents itself as a recording from one such intense session, and I can’t help but wonder if ol’ Pär partook in a séance just for some authentic field recordings. Well no wonder that Glossolalia track sets my neck hairs on end!

Whether you believe in commune with the afterlife or not, The Humming Tapes definitely sells you on the atmosphere of a séance. It’s got the anxious waiting in the dark (The Sitting), the creepy contact (Glossolalia), a strangely forlorn discourse with the dead (Centennial), and that soul-emptying sense that you got more than you bargained for in toying with spirits (Electricity, Kathédra). A charming Halloween album, then.

High Contrast - High Society

Hospital Records: 2004

We’re hitting peak liquid funk with this one, folks. Hospital Records and its whole damn crew were flying high in the year 2004, their fast soul music cutting a hyper-uplifting path of critical and commercial success few others in the d’n’b scene could match. Then along came some Aussie group a year later, completely changing the scene once more, and earned a fuckton more critical and commercial success than the Hospital posse could ever have achieved – heck, anyone doing d’n’b at the time. That didn’t deter London Elektricity and his roster of liquid funkers from carrying on as they did before, in fact enjoying just as much commercial success as when they were the new hotness. They just didn’t have as many critics gushing over their sound anymore, many lamenting the label’s refusal in evolving with the times. Um, have these critics ever paid attention to jungle at large? Once a genre is established, it stays that way forever after. It’s why the scene’s filled with so many persistent micro-niche interests.

But let’s return to that peak, Hospital Records high and mighty after a string of highly touted records. One of those was London Elektricity’s Billion Dollar Gravy, which I covered way, way, way back in the day. The other was High Society, High Contrast’s highly anticipated sophomore effort. Man oh man, is this paragraph heavy on the ‘high’s. High can’t help it, this album filling my happy centers high with PLUR goo, that I high and high, hi-diddly-high dii-o. (hi!)

Yeah, we’re firmly entrenched in ‘don’t fix an unbroken thing’ territory with High Society. Lincoln Barrett’s debut was a mildly moodier affair; still honoring the ‘street’ vibe soul music came from and had been capably executed by jazzstep sorts prior. By this point though, the adoring public had spoken, demanding more divas, MORE tear-out, MOAR liquid funk! And who was High Contrast to deny these fans what they craved? Someone who didn’t want to get pigeonholed perhaps, but if that was ever the case, he sure hides that hope here. If you’re at all familiar with any of Hospital Records’ output, you’re gonna’ know what to expect on this album, Mr. Barrett keeping the d’n’b jams peppy with uplift to spare. It can get a tad corny at times, and folks who figure jungle are serious-step business will obviously scoff at such pleasantries, but you cannot deny High Contrast’s consistency as a producer throughout this album.

He does show some further development in his style though, making use of more vocalists rather than strictly relying on samples as with his earlier material. Dynamite MC is here! Spoonface is here! No Lay is here! Um, Tomahawk (4) is here. Right, aside from the first one, I’m not familiar with any of these names, but they provide nice flavor to the album regardless, especially No Lay’s grime spitting on Angels And Fly. And hey, is that a touch of the ‘trancestep’ I hear in The Persistence of Memory. Cheeky, cheeky…

Northumbria - Helluland

Cryo Chamber: 2015

I’ve covered so many forms of dark ambient from Cryo Chamber, I should take stock on whether I’m missing any. There’s space drone, for sure, and abstract drone near alongside it. Can’t forget the post-apocalyptic trip, nor the various excursions into realms of the occult. Moody synths, bleak widescreen dub, creepy field recordings, eerie musique concrete abstraction, cinematic sound design – that’s about all there is to dark ambient’s palette, right?

Not at all, as we’re still missing out on a pair of the scene’s classic components: old school industrial decay and sludgy doom metal drone. I touched on the latter one some two years ago now (!!), wherein metal’s morbid tendencies transplanted quite nicely into dark ambient’s domain, heavy guitar tones stretched out with reverb and feedback into a near-impenetrable fog of sound. And while some of the artists I’ve covered on Cryo Chamber have come from such backgrounds, none have made it their primary style, instead using synths and field recordings for their constructed soundscapes. Not this Northumbria duo though, fully embracing guitars for one of the least electronic sounding albums of dark ambient I’ve yet come across on this label. It only took me twenty-three CDs to get there.

Northumbria is comprised of Dorian Williamson and Jim Field, both of whom have floated around goth and sludge metal scenes for a while now. Jim Field even saw a little success with Sue Hotton as Rhea’s Obsession, their brand of darkwave finding them a home on industrial print Metropolis Records. Sometime in the recent past, the two met, discovering they had that all-elusive creative synergy so many musicians are in perpetual search of (other Holy Grails: the perfect beat, major label deals that won’t fuck you over). Their doom metal drone powers combined, Misters Field and Williamson started releasing music on a number of scattered dark ambient and post-metal prints. This included albums on labels like Consouling Sounds, thisquietarmy Records, and Altar Of Waste, plus compilation contributions to Futuresequence, Dipsomaniac Records, and Kalpamantra. Hm, seems a lot of Cryo Chamber guys have also released music on Kalpamantra. Are we looking at a sister print situation here, like Beyond and Waveform? Coo’ if so.

All these words spent on the background, and little left to detail Northumbria’s debut on Cryo Chamber, Helluland. Ah, well, that’s because there isn’t much to say. Guitar drone is generally vague and nondescript, all about the mood it conveys. And the mood be very melancholic indeed (Still Waters, Door Made Of Light, Song For Freyja, Catch A Falling Knife I); other times more sinister and foreboding (Sacred Ground, Maelstorm, Catch A Falling Knife II). Beyond these implied titles and moods though, I feel like these pieces could support nondescript art house films of chilly moors or foggy waterfronts. Or watching spiders weave their webs in the glow of dim street lights while waiting at a RAV line stop. Okay, that one’s super-specific, but damn if it didn’t suit the little scene I watched unfold.

Various - Hed Kandi: Deeper

Hed Kandi: 2001

With deep house getting commercial love again, I felt an itch. Not a deep itch, mind you; one nestled just under the epidermis. Still, a casual finger flick of a scratch would not suffice, a small amount of digging required. I tried and tested brand, catering to pop ‘n soul sensibilities without getting ultra-submerged in scene purity. Tunes suited for lazy-relaxin’ home times, lounge club wining and dining, nightmarish clothing boutique shopping, or soundtracking a promotional gentrified enclave vid’. A light vibe, a stylish vibe, a name you always know what to expect with just a glance of the track list. Unfortunately, there were no Naked Music or Om Records CDs in the used shop that day. Ah well, guess I’ll give this Deeper from Hed Kandi a shot. About time I got something from that label anyway.

For those who’ve never ventured into a CD shop before, Hed Kandi carved out a distinct identity on the compilation racks, with super stylish cover art unlike anything else on the UK market. When the label first appeared at the turn of the century, said market was primed for a label like this one, capturing the interest of a maturing clubbing audience just coming off the first throes of superclub ecstasy bedlam. They were moving on from hard house and trance, thus sexy house tunes coupled with sexy artwork were an easy sell for the casual consumer. Flood the market with multiple series of various takes on your musical manifesto (Nu Cool, Disco Kandi, Beach House, Winter Chill, Twisted Disco), and you’ve cornered the compilation corner in every music chain store for years to come. Heck, I probably would have picked one of these up back in the day too, if it weren’t for those outrageous import prices (forty bones for two discs of decent house? Pass).

Deeper was Hed Kandi’s stab at getting deeper with their house offerings, which probably seems redundant on the surface but then the label wasn’t one to let any potential angle go untapped. CD1 sticks to deep house, with names like The Rurals, Miguel Migs, Lisa Shaw, Kevin Yost, A:xus, and New Phunk Theory getting repped. There’s more, but I honestly know nothing about Silent Poets, Aquanote, or Laid, though they do hold their own with the recognizable artists here. Predictably, the vocals are soulful, the rhythms groovy, and the piano/organ/saxophone solos tasteful. It’s exactly the sort of deep house I was expecting from this set, perfectly worth the used shop price I paid for it.

CD 2 was what initially caught my eye though – well, after the striking cover art. The deep vibes go a little tribal and proggy here, including a Deep Dish rub of Dusted’s Always Remember To Respect And Honour Your Mother (aka: lovely Rollo side project). Masters At Work show up too, as does Kings Of Tomorrow, Steve Lawler, PQM, and, um, Rui Da Silva (no guesses on which track of his). Not as consistent as CD1, but definitely more fun.

Omni Trio - The Haunted Science

Moving Shadow: 1996

The only Omni Trio album you’re supposed to have, even if you’re not an Omni Trio fan. Mind you, my sources for this proclamation is entirely predicated upon which singles have the longest legacy within Rob Haigh’s career. For sure every junglist worth their hoodie knows of Renegade Snares, the single that broke Omni Trio out of the darkcore scene. Who knew jungle could sound so calm and pleasant with charming piano hooks? More than enough to help kick-off the ‘atmospheric’ side of jungle. Which lead to ‘intelligent’ records, and refined tastes melding with ‘jazz’, while losing the frenetic rave roots in favor of a stripped-back ‘tech’ approach to the craft. All this, and drum ‘n bass too.

Though The Haunted Science technically isn’t Omni Trio’s first LP, it may as well be his proper debut album, prior The Deepest Cut more a collection of earlier singles and remixes. This one also features a number of tracks that would become workhorses in the compilation and DJ mix field, their only rival the aforementioned Renegade Snares (because obviously). Part of this probably was due to timing, The Haunted Science coming out in ’96, a very good year for d’n’b’s commercial and critical ventures. While Omni Trio didn’t get quite the same degree of praise and plaudits as your Goldies or Roni Sizes or Photeks or LTJ Bukems, he was always in the discussion of Very Important Drum ‘n Bass Guys, his records necessary weapons in any self-respecting DJ’s crate. Even the ardent ‘ardcore sorts would make room for an Omni Trio cut.

As for the big singles off The Haunted Science, we get three essential tunes: Trippin’ On Broken Beats, Who Are You, Nu Birth Of Cool, and Haunted Kind. Wait, that’s four? Sorry, personal perspective throwing things a little askew, that last one always slipping me by, probably because it’s more a trip-hop thing than d’n’b. Lord Discogs tells me Haunted Kind did significant compilation duty though, and who am I to dispute The Lord That Knows All?

The first three, however, were such major tracks in the Omni Trio canon, that we get two versions of each on this album! The jazzy Trippin’ On Broken Beats is easily the most famous of these singles, even appearing on Paul Oakenfold’s Live In Oslo mix when the trance jock was working a little jungle class into his sets. Who Are You is pure groovy bliss, but Aquasky takes it down de-e-eep tech-step roads with sub-bass to die for. Nu Birth Of Cool carries on the Renegade Snares tradition of funky licks, piano kicks, and peppy vocal samples, while the Rogue Unit Mix takes it into rougher jungle pastures.

The rest of The Haunted Science plays to Omni Trio’s established strengths: spacious elegant beatcraft, impossibly cool jazz vibes, and an atmosphere of endless ecstasy. Maybe not as genre-defining as other works of the time - you know what you’re getting with this album - but damn does it ever deliver.

Fear Factory - Genexus

Nuclear Blast Entertainment: 2015

I didn’t think I’d return to Fear Factory. Demanufacture is a bona-fide industrial metal classic that throws enough cyborg bones to my techno sensibilities that I can return to it plenty times over, and maybe I’ll pick up Obsolete should I find it on the cheap, but I had little need to dig further into the band’s material. Besides, general consensus is they’ve essentially fixated on their singular style that made them famous, all the while having personnel issues as members leave, return, and all the typical turmoil that comes with metal egos clashing. Not good developments if you want to stay relevant. They sorted their shit out though, eventually reconvening with most of the original band intact, and appear on the resurgence again. Not because they’ve adapted with changing trends to fit with modern times, oh no. They’re sticking to their phased plasma rifles, but sounding more confident in who they are and what their music entails.

Thus, taking a browse in what Fear Factory had been up to in recent years, I discovered a new album called Genexus, and that it was being hailed as their best since Demanufacture - some even claimed it better than that seminal record! It definitely has the same sonic markers: machine rhythms firing like gatling guns, vocalist Buron C. Bell doing his vintage growling verse/clean singing chorus thing, all marinated with electronic treatments from Rhys Fulber. The topics remain fixated on future shock industrialization, mechanical societies stripping away our humanity, resisting the inevitable cyborg apocalypse, and all that good stuff. I mean, if you’ve heard Zero Signal - and any metal fan or Mortal Kombat disciple should have by now – you’ve heard a good chunk of Genexus.

This is everything we’d want in a Fear Factory album anyway. The band carved out a unique niche, and despite a few metal groups co-opting it in the two decades since, nothing comes close to sounding like these guys when they’re firing on all cylinders. And while I haven’t taken in much of their material since Demanufacture, I’m told this is one of their most melodic records ever. It definitely sells the more melodramatic aspect of their style, tracks like Autonomous Combat System, Protomech, Anodized, Battle For Utopia, and especially Regenerate laying the supporting synths on thick. Hey, you won’t see me complaining about this – far as I’m concerned, Fulber’s contributions remain one the best parts of a Fear Factory tune, giving them their distinct character above so much death metal out there.

Though Genexus is nearly balls-to-sprockets thrash all the way through, they do mix things a little in terms of tempo, tracks like Soul Hacker and Church Of Execution going for more groove metal action instead. Meanwhile, final track Expiration Date offers an epic ‘ballad’, which I can honestly say I never expected from this band. I’ve heard creepy, industrial ambient sections from them, but a full track of Bell forgoing his usual growl? Wonders never cease! Genexus definitely deserves the praise it’s gotten.