I've never gotten anything from this label before, so it's a shame that the first thing they sent me sucks.? This is damn near an hour of halfassed pseudo industrial/goth material that just makes no sense to me.? The band is basically a male/female duo that enlists the help of a drummer to crank out 13 tracks of simply structured power chords with electronic smatterings and female singing.? In some ways I could see fans of this particular style liking this, and I think the vocalist has some potential, but in all reality this stuff's just goofy.? Some of it's kind of catchy, but it's just too stripped down and groovy sometimes, and the industrial smatterings are kind of all over the place from weird new wave sounding synths to more abrasive textures or random noises and stuff.? Actually, one of the biggest problems with the entire CD is that the guitar tone isn't right.? They're kind of going for that unnatural industrial bite, but they end up falling somewhere between that biting industrial kind of texture and a muddy overproduced churn.? So while most of the stuff sounds pretty crisp and effective, the guitars are kind of flat and powerless.? I can live with the drum sound, the bass is there, and most of the vocals sound pretty good... but the guitars are definitely a source of loss in overall impact.? With a louder and fuller guitar sound I could imagine some of the catchier songs being pretty good.? The more acerbic vocal snarls and generally more irritating vocal/electronic textures employed in tracks like "Passion" just aren't working, though.? And what's up with those weird blasts and tremolo picking riffs?? While not a very good song, the fluid vocal performance and harmonized lines in "Walk Away" are precisely where this girl ought to be, because she's pretty damn good at that stuff, so were this band more of a Lacuna Coil thing or something I bet her talents would really shine.? But this whole industrial/goth meets nu-metal meets faux 90's thrash grooves thing isn't cutting it at all.? Some of the songs are clearly going for a more mainstream type of direction, too.? Notably "Nothing", which has another strong singing performance and is about as close as they come to a well written song, despite some annoying guitar layers and senseless synths.? I really don't understand why they don't focus on that direction more often, because the "aggressive" songs on this thing are fucking terrible.? "Cocaine Sex" is a cover by some band called Renegade Soundwave and it, too, is awful.? No surprise, as with a title lack that I can't imagine it being a good track.? The layout's also so-so.? The back cover artwork looks alright, but the cover is goofy, the text looks too plain, the booklet is inconsistent, and the band logo is pretty cheesy.? The lyrics are all over the place from light socio-political fare to personal trauma and sex and shit like that, so... whatever.? It's all just kind of disorganized and illogical in the end.? I mean, they go from songs called "Class War" to songs called "Dirty Sanchez", and I honestly don't think I could ever be a fan of a band with a song called "Dirty Sanchez" - unless they were some sort of hokey gore grind band or something.? I'm just not into this.? I'm surprised this showed up because I'd think most people would be able to gauge from reading this site that I'd be really critical of this.? I'd love to hear the singer working in a different band with a different musical framework, but I don't dig this disc at all.
[Triple X]
Running time - 51:13, Tracks: 13
[Notable tracks: there aren't really any songs that grab me]
Nocturne - http://www.nocturne.cc
