Today, class, we’re going to use an exceptionally nerdy analogy to help define what Combichrist’s new album The Venom In The Mouth Of God both is and isn’t. Bear with us - the analogy is painfully arcane, but works in the context of dealing with an industrial record.
In recent years, electronic music has become pervasive in the mainstream as well as on the fringes - both in the sense that digital programming and electronic sounds are being incorporated into compositions at an increased rate, and that in some cases, electronic entities themselves are writing the music (see the current controversy with AI artists breaking through the country music charts.) With that comes a sense that the music should be brighter, springier, more energetic, as electronics so often take us into higher registers and up-tempo beats.
Here’s where the analogy starts - there is a sense that electronic music is a late-era Gundam - agile, accurate, festooned in bright colors and blazing across the sky at a nigh-unbelieveable rate. Combichrist, by virtue of being an industrial band from back before the proliferation and ready access of electronica, is a lumbering OmniMech; a seventy-five ton Mad Cat (or Timber Wolf,) of teeth and forward-facing visceral power, painted in unforgiving gunmetal gray.
Ever since the band composed the soundtrack for the video game DmC: Devil May Cry, there’s been a theory that the band has slowly moved more toward metal and away from the straight industrial they cut their teeth on. The culmination of this was 2024’s excellent CMBCRST, which one writer on these pages named the Album of the Year.
The Venom In The Mouth of God, slams the gears into reverse, and takes the band back to thundering basics. It is not until halfway into the album with “Rise” that the band even hints at the metal that forged so much of the three albums before (we remain convinced that it was coded into the Geneva Convention and Vatican II that every industrial band has to write a song called “Rise” or “Risen” or “Rise Up” or some such.)
While those metal hammers get dropped now and again, that’s not really what The Venom… is about. The album wants to be sparse and haunting and deadly, a brooding monster with a fission core that threatens with every ponderous stride and shadow of presence. While the songs at the outset prove the attempt, it’s in the back half where the record really flashes its jagged fangs.
No song on the album more proves Combichrist’s (and ideaman Andy LaPlegua’s) skill at composing in this vein than the questionably mature “S.T.F.U.” (not just a John Cena maneuver anymore!) This is one of those rare songs that shouldn’t work, but does - it is, ironically, kind of a strange cousin of Fear Factory’s ill-conceived “Back The Fuck Up” from 2001, a stream-of-consciousness quasi-rap that has no business being as well assembled or catchy as it is.
It sets the stage for the rest of the album, where, as odd as this sounds, Combichrist composes a series of beat poems on steroids, with LaPlegua as the cybernetic Allen Ginsberg. Again, should this work? Maybe not, but listen to the venomous undercurrent of “The Way We Want To Be Seen,” and try to find a crack in the armor. LaPlegua has always had this in him; the ability to set introspective missives on personal anguish and impermanence to a cinematic beat (thinking of “Bottle of Pain” from One Fire,) but he really takes the chains off for this album and leans into the style.
What the listener takes away from The Venom In The Mouth Of God, will really come down to what side of Combichrist is preferred. Those who exclusively believe the band’s best material has been in the their last three albums may well find this a harder journey, where those who lament the band ever straying from their roots will rejoice. Either way, the fact remains that the album’s final eight songs will take the listener on a journey of steel and fire and discontent, with nary a beam saber in sight.
We’re all familiar with the axiomatic mixing of ingredients into some greater whole. The most common refrain used to illustrate this concept is “you got peanut butter in my chocolate! You got chocolate in my peanut butter!”
Now, take that as a basic principle, and add in rainbow sprinkles and a cherry, and you get something musically akin to Krystal System’s new LP Da Punch.
Like a musically self-aware Voltron, the French electro-metal duo (which hardly seems like enough of an epithet to encapsulate what the band displays, but that’s what they call themselves) folds in pieces of a veritable panoply of genres to make something new. Pop punk, old-school industrial, electronic, rock, and even a taste of those big, atmospheric Fear Factory ballads all blend into a sugary album of ear candy that’s hard not to smile at. And, oh by the way, half the songs are in French.
Certain constants of music remain immutable. One of them is the intrinsic appeal of the descending scale. Every band and every genre has played with it, from the haunting tones of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused,” to the thumping bravado of DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It To Ya.” Right from the beginning of “Someday,” Krystal System dives into that same pool, filtering it through distortion and airier vocals than either of those other two examples, creating a song that buzzes with venom, particularly as it moves into the thunderous pre-chorus and ultimately into the catharsis of the chorus. Never mind the hints of alternative that color the margins.
Not to be outdone for versatility, Da Punch then moves into “Eclats Rouges” (“red flashes,” for the uninitiated,) which, with apologies to the band for saying so, is a pop punk song with a singalong chorus that just happens to have some electronic overtones.
Step by step, Krystal System moves from form to form, and without warning, the next two songs take us through a loving tour of KMFDM records from the early ‘90s. We’re taken on a journey of both the pure industrial drive of “Iryna’s song” (think “Rip the System,”) and then the proto-industrial metal of “Neon Cage” (akin to the entire Nihil album,) right down to the machine-gun drum machine sample.
One last highlight - “Soleil Noir”...well, it’s gonna sound odd, but the best descriptor of this song is that it sounds like the Pixies covered the boss battle music from the old Raiden video game series. In French. Yeah, that makes no sense. But trust us, for all that your instincts are saying that can’t work, this song is, as the kids say, a bop.
There are several bands who have been lauded on these pages for their ability to stretch the definitions of genre or outright exceed them by reaching for disparate elements and flexing their adaptability. Where Krystal System and Da Punch differ from those bands is that they reach outside those boundaries, but rather than adapt to the form, they make the form adapt to them, cramming and mangling other styles into their own existing idiom until the machine hums with life.
It should be noted that even on an album such as this, creativity in this mold can only be stretched so far - and while Krystal System accomplishes a hell of a lot on this record, the songs we didn’t discuss here are fine, but are permutations of the twists and turns already mentioned. Which is in no way a knock, more of a note for accuracy’s sake.
Da Punch is one of the finest albums to come out this year, hands down. It is energetic, explosive, exploratory, expansive, and a bunch of other adjectives that don’t start with the letter ‘e.’ It’s hard not to get caught up in the infectiousness of the beats and the groove.
Debut albums can be hard to read. If they’re any good at all, they fall into two camps - the first is the more common, which is the camp of “they’ve been writing these songs for ten years, constantly refining them and finding their voice, and this is the pinnacle of what this band will ever be.” Think Life of Agony and “River Runs Red.” The less common camp is the one populated by records that are good…but are instilled with the promise of so much more. Think Iron Maiden’s debut album. The second camp forces upon us that thing we hate most in our modern lives - delayed gratification - but the patience is worth the agonizing wait, as bands in the second camp are capable of stratospheric careers.
Enter Pridian, a shiny new metal band out of Estonia (you read that right, Estonia, which has the coolest flag of all the Baltic countries, hands down,) who is casting their lot into the metal circle with their debut album “Venetian Dark.”
(Sidebar: the band apparently used to be known by another name in Estonia, ÆØNS, and released an album under that name, so whether this is truly a debut record or not is distinctly in the eye of the beholder, but it really has little bearing on the substance of this review.)
Pridian aims to be a lot of things to a lot of people. A metalcore band at heart, there’s a lot of electronic undertones and industrial atmospheres, and in the end, the stew ends up something like a Gen Z version of Fear Factory, complete with the occasional soft(er) contemplative piece.
Skip on down to the fifth track, “DINY,” because that’s where the album really comes to life. There’s a “Mr. Roboto” synth line vocal to start, accompanied by a hammering but very accessible metal riff. The juxtaposition of those elements in and of themselves is novel enough, but then the main beat breaks and the song adds more layers, becoming a catchy, fun metal smasher. The clean vocals of the chorus tie the whole thing together, and keep the piece grounded amidst the chaos surrounding it. Within The Ruins could pick up a tip of two if they gave it a listen.
“Void Resonance” is the next real highlight, and man, it serves to remind how long it’s been since we’ve heard a metal band that can be versatile within a single song. Okay, fine, “Void Resonance” is not even three minutes long, and every part of it is metal through and through, but the first half and the second half tell two different stories, and there’s just not enough of that in the genre in the last couple of years. We’re not talking about something as dramatically, gleefully chaotic as Destrage, but we are talking about an artist in Pridian who is capable of thinking in parallel lines.
Pridian spends most of “Venetian Dark” circling the concept of mixing metalcore and electronic into a single package. Most of the cuts are permutations of that idea, where the band feeds different percentages of each into their creative machine and sees what the process spits out. “Out for Blood” is a Browning-style electronic mash, but with softer vocals thrown in that serve as a protective layer. “Darker Tides” is almost the same thing, but switches out the consistent soft vocals for a mix of harsher ones, and tips the scales more toward guitar distortion.
What you’re probably realizing as you read this, is that “Venetian Dark” is an album built on experimentation in the moment, a mixture of ideas and concepts atom-smashed into cohesive songs, or at least something resembling them. Part and parcel with that is the necessary double-edged blade of trying out a bunch of different stuff - it doesn’t all work. “Cyanide Dreams” is a straight-ahead metal banger…but that’s all it is. One of a thousand similar straight-ahead metal bangers. The album’s lead track “The Downfall of Apathy,” ambles about and never quite finds a home, and later on, “Ruin” is going for the soft-Fear-Factory aesthetic we talked about, but it’s messy - it doesn’t have the (relatively) clean definition of FF’s “Resurrection.” (Man, remember when Fear Factory was a good band?)
I like “Venetian Dark,” but I wish I liked it just a little more, because there’s something here, something that could be explosive and novel and groundbreaking and great. Pieces of it are there, easy to see, sticking out from the scattered detritus of the genre like prehistoric bones jutting out from the ground after a monsoon. “Venetian Dark” is a quality album, but it’s Just. Not. Quite. There. Wherever there is, and whatever that means. I am already anxiously awaiting the band’s sophomore album, eagerly hoping Pridian falls into the second camp.
At first blush, one would look at The Defect and its ideaman Jonny McBee, and say ‘other than offering us The Browning but with a female lead vocalist, what is the point of this?’ It’s a reasonable question, but it leaves a lot on the table, and oversimplifies what’s contained on The Defect’s debut album “Death X Destiny.”
Really what this album represents is a consequence-free space for McBee and vocalist Moon to explore some of the corners of industrial music without jeopardizing the established reputation of The Browning or any associated musical acts.
To that end, “Death X Destiny” dives into a few corners that we either seldom hear, or simply haven’t heard in a while. One needn’t go father than the single “Lost in the Shadows” to hear the kind of industrial ballad (if such a thing can be said to exist,) that hasn’t really existed since Fear Factory’s “Resurrection” (and you know, all the stuff that happened to Fear Factory.) Truly, what’s old can be new again, and with the modern twist that The Defect employs as they go about their business, their sound is fresh and vital.
If that were the only exploratory hallmark of “Death X Destiny,” then the album would be a shallow experience, but McBee and Moon pull from a lot of other corners as well. There’s the rock-ish song “Dreamwalker,” which might sound appropriate on an Emigrate album, as well as “Into the Void” (not a cover of the Black Sabbath song,) which carries the kind of tone we’ve come to expect from Fear of Domination. Oh, and there’s plenty of other recognizable pieces in there as well, from sources as far flung as DJ Zardonic to Kontrust to Ministry to Deadlock, and of course, an actual appearance by The Browning for “Immortal.”
Don’t be misled - these comparisons are merely for the sake of touchstones that the audience will recognize. The Defect incorporates these styles while overlaying them with their own original flavor, most of which is centered around the vocals of Moon. She does not lend a virtuoso performance to the album, but she is also not asked to. To do so may have actually defeated the pulse and tenor of the album and what it was trying to convey. If The Browning is meant to be an all-out aural assault, then The Defect is something different, teasing at the ethereal, even as it hammers along with industrial might. Moon’s detached, purposefully quiet and haunting vocal line makes this record…well, demure is the wrong word, but something of that implication as it sits among its industrial contemporaries.
“Death X Destiny” is a fascinating collection of parts and experiments, and is fine for a debut, but there’s room for growth here, if the band (duo?) is to be a continuing concern. Really, the band could go in one of two directions - either lean into the low-fi beat market and capitalize on the anesthetic, hypnotic quality of Moon’s vocals, or lean into the extreme and try to become an American 6:33. Either way, the potential to produce something revolutionary exists.
And perhaps that’s the final takeaway of “Death X Destiny.” While the album is fine for what it is, it is more appealing in the way it represents a possible future than it is a listening experience in the present.
Lo-fi, ethereal songs are all the rage now (contrarian use of the word ‘rage’ fully intended.) They typically provide a soothing escape, a gentle melody with a metronomic rhythm meant to induce focus, calmness, relaxation and in many ways, nothing more simple than detachment from the overbearing pace and demands of everyday life.
Now, imagine a space where lo-fi beats were amplified through the lens of true industrial music. Think “Filth Pig” more than “One Fire.” Automatically, the instinct would be to say ‘well, that can’t possibly be lo-fi anymore.’
…
Enter Tayne, the ambitious three-piece industrial pop band from London, and their new album “Love.”
Getting it out of the way - there’s no one single thing on “Love” that is truly revolutionary. That’s not why the album is worthy of dissection, though. It is the synthesis of disparate elements, styles and formations heretofore thought to be incompatible, that make “Love” an experience unlike most every other offering out there.
To understand the album is to begin with its quietest element - the airy, immaterial vocal presentation of band leader Matthew Sutton. To take a minor liberty with a classic axiom, his performance is the calm within the storm. As much as his vocal lines on songs like “Cause /// Worthless” may be the quietest element, they are the linchpin that sets the pace for the entire surrounding experience.
This is where the lo-fi part of the conversation comes in. Since Sutton delivers such an intentionally muted performance, it forces the music to conform to the timbre that he sets. The cacophony around him is something of a dangerous, violent, but ultimately chained animal, bound to him, rising and falling as he rises and falls. It’s not until the end of “Cause /// Worthless” that the music is allowed off the leash, and not until Sutton is done making his statement. The end result, album-wide, is a sense of a temperate beat, even if the sounds which compose that beat are destructive in the extreme (and they are.)
Now, when the band takes the intensity up to their maximum, they’re as capable as any in the business of bringing the house down. The song “Scars” seems to exist almost exclusively to prove this point. For those who were weaned on the heady days of Ministry or KMFDM or Nine Inch Nails or the Kidneythieves, you’ll feel right at home with “Scars” which is an explosive, heavily distorted touchstone to the traditional elements of industrial.
Down at the end and worthy of mention, “In This Trend” is the closest that Tayne gets to a metal/industrial hybrid, and by itself wouldn’t mean all that much, but in contrast to what has come before, makes for a pleasant variety right as the album starts to tail off.
Directing attention for a moment to the album’s second cut, “Down.” These might be words that have never been put in conjunction before - the song is something of an industrial shoegaze pop song. As confusing and foreign as that may sound, listen for yourself - it’s the only apt description. It is also, perhaps not coincidentally, the best cut on the record.
Is “Love” the kind of album that will enter a listener’s heavy rotation? Likely not. The collision of elements, heavy and soft, melodic and discordant, in some ways make “Love” more academically intriguing than accessible in a common sense. It doesn’t quite fit the motif of mundane tasks like ‘need to pick up milk and butter,’ but also doesn’t have the dominating persistence to match activities like ‘need to do 270 push-ups in the next five minutes.’ However! It is an experience unique unto itself, a demonstration that Tayne is a group of musicians who understand what they’re capable of, and have mastered the story they’re trying to tell. That alone makes it worthy both of the time to listen, and the celebration of the artists who chose to make it.
As the years go by and I've been doing this list for some, oh, I don't know, decade and a half or whatever, it seems to me that each list may be increasingly influenced by where I am in my life - which is to say more accurately, what do I feel like hearing? Which is to say, this comes with an admission: the list that follows may simply be my personal best albums list. Okay, let me not insult you - it's obvious that this is my list, my name is on the damn thing. What I mean is that this may be MY list - it may not be the best albums if we're judging on technical prowess or compositional acuity. It may be simply a list of albums that I enjoyed the most this year. And so be it.
Okay, a brief review of the rules: - Must be an original studio composition in 2024 - No re-releases - No Greatest Hits or compilations of any kind - No live albums
Without further preamble -
HONORABLE MENTION – While She Sleeps – Self Hell
I, for one, wasn’t sure rap metal would ever make a comeback. Nor was I really sure that it should. And maybe it still hasn’t. But there’s a couple artists this year that tried to put a toe back in that formerly pristine but now dirtied and forgotten pool. While She Sleeps was one of them. (Quick shout-out to Ihsahn’s self-titled album for narrowly missing out here.)
EP OF THE YEAR: Alestorm – Voyage of the Dead Marauder EP
You know how some people are ‘small doses’ people? I think Alestorm is a ‘small doses’ band for me. And this was the perfect dose. As ever with Alestorm, the comedy is acerbic and not for the faint of heart, but that does nothing to reduce its hilarity. And the title track? As legit a song as you can imagine.
11 – Reliqa – Secrets of the Future
Not all that dissimilar from While She Sleeps in concept, but this is the better execution. The band is tight and in control and they know the sound they’re going for, even as it crosses several aesthetic and sonic boundaries.
10 – Black Note Graffiti – Resist the Divide
Not a single song over 3:45, and punctuated by short, minimalist riffs. There’s something about the mechanics of this album that’s kind of hypnotic. Think Static-X, but dial way back on the gain and slow the tempo down to half speed. But it’s similar in that the constructions are sparse, and I mean that as a compliment. You can hear every part being played clearly, and no song overstays its welcome. A better comparison – like a slightly less-screamy, more deliberate Hellfreaks.
9 – Dungeon Crawl – Maze Controller
I kinda hate how much I like this album, because it is so unapologetically nerdy and based around late nights mainlining caffeine while you watch your graph-paper hero lose hit points because of a bad luck dice roll. (And yes, I hate it because I’ve been there.) When you strip that way, thought, there’s a really good, authentic thrash album underneath, and as I look back, I seem to have a place for that on my list every year (last year was Hellevate’s “The Purpose Is Cruelty” EP.) The guitar work here is fun, the lyrics are appropriately absurd, the whole thing just feels right.
8 – Sundrifter – An Earlier Time
After Sundrifter released the very good “Visitations” back in whatever-the-hell year it was, I remember thinking to myself “damn, if those guys could just focus this a little and keep it within the margins, they’d really make something great.” Well, now we have “An Earlier Time,” and it’s exactly the apex of Sundrifter could and should be. It’s all the same cosmic wanderings of a wayward probe, but it’s snappier, more confident, and all around more listenable, while losing none of the signature fuzzy guitar tone.
7 – Dampf – No Angels Alive
Third year in a row. Third year in a row that some electronic artist cracks my year end album list, by crossing over and blurring the line into metal. Now, I’m giving myself a little grace here, because this is the second time that the artist has been Dampf, which means this is more than just a coincidence. Dampf may not write the most technically challenging metal, but there is no question that there’s an understanding of what goes into composing a catchy hit. There’s something about these songs that hooks you immediately.
6 – Powerwolf – Wake Up the Wicked
Color me a little surprised. I’ve long been a Powerwolf partisan, but I freely admit that the band had a long run of making a great album followed by a mediocre one. So imagine my shock when this album comes out comparatively on the heels of last year's “Interludium,” and still bangs with a new bunch of massive songs that only Powerwolf could have written.
5 – Powerman 5000 – Abandon Ship
Am I the only person in the world who has this as a top five album from 2024? Probably. And is some of that no doubt because of my personal nostalgia? Possibly. But this is my list, so tough rocks. I’m just going to come out and say it – PM5K will never again be the band that wrote “Tonight the Stars Revolt!” That age has passed. But they also don’t have to be that band again. After however many years wandering in the desert, the comeback that seemingly began with “Builders of the Future” some ten years ago is real and tangible and authentic. And this album is a ton of fun.
4 – Dead Poet Society – Fission
One of the most unique bands going. Minimalist beats, heavy rhythms, guitar tone not heard since Soundgarden’s “4th of July”…this is a heady mix of styles and colors, and it takes a steady hand to be able to balance all of those into music that’s even listenable, let alone good. Extra props for “Hurt,” which is probably my Song of the Year…as someone who is also in a non-traditional career (yes, I have a job, and no, it’s not writing about music,) that tune hits close to home sometimes.
**It merits mention, there’s a gap here. These albums are all great, but the next three were on a level all their own in 2024.**
3 – Transit Method – Othervoid
The sensibilities of Rush, but paired with the beats and rhythms of a punk band? Hell yeah, sign me up for all of that. It’s not every year that a band new to me crosses my (virtual) desk and absolutely pins my attention to the wall until I’ve heard the whole thing. Can’t even remember who the last one would have been. The Hawkins? Red Eleven? Doesn’t matter. That’s how I felt listening to Transit Method. And I hope you do, too.
2 – The Warning – Keep Me Fed
Ugh, I went back and forth on this a hundred and fifty times. I even complained to my compatriot Chris about it. I haven’t had this much trouble deciding between two albums for #1 since 2014, when I battled internally for a week over Red Eleven’s “Round II” and Destrage’s “Are You Kidding Me? No.” (I picked Red Eleven then, and I stand by it…about half the time.) I can’t understand why the Warning haven’t conquered the world yet. The talent, the songs, the aesthetic…this band has everything you want in a world-wide hero rock group. It must only be the fallow period for rock fandom that we find ourselves in that prevents them from ascending. Although, every time I see them, it’s in a slightly larger venue…In the meantime, this is certainly the album I spent the most time with this year, but it did ultimately fall short to…
1 – Combichrist – CMBCRST
Some years ago, Combichrist took flak from their fans for gradually moving away from a pure industrial style, incorporating more and more metal elements. I personally think it’s the best decision the band ever made, as every album since that point (perhaps beginning with the DmC soundtrack?) has been better than the previous, culminating in this masterpiece of doom, gloom and as KMFDM coined the term, the ‘ultra-heavy beat.’ Some of the best riffs of the year were recorded for this album. What puts it ahead of The Warning at #2? The Warning, for all their greatness, worked with more professional songwriters. And as Chris has so passionately explained on our very pages, there’s no sin in that, none at all. But when you’re deciding between masterpieces, that extra little degree of authenticity for Combichrist matters.
Asking an existential question – at what point does the ‘side project’ band supersede the original band? For PAIN seems to have become more important to the catalog and indeed, legacy, of frontman Peter Tägtgren than Hypocrisy. For his own part, Tägtgren seems to take turns between the faces of his music. To wit, Hypocrisy released records in 2013 and 2021; PAIN took its turn in 2016 and now in 2024.
All of that is said to make no point other than that Tägtgren takes both projects seriously and with equal dedication. To pass off either one as subservient, regardless of fan reaction, sales numbers or press, is a mistake and undersells the talent of a man who can compose in two very different styles as the mood suits him.
PAIN comes back to the fore this spring with “I Am,” a declarative album that, in short, hits many of the trademarks of PAIN, but never quite delivers the multi-faceted bombastic experience of its predecessor, “Coming Home.”
That’s not to say that “I Am” lacks entirely for laudable moments. “Party in My Head” uses a synth intro and sparse verses to set the stage for a big chorus that fits perfectly within the pantheon of PAIN’s greatest hits. The title track utilizes the same tricks, but tempers the tempo and moderates the chorus with a lovingly-borrowed-from-NIN synth track that makes the song as grandiose as Tägtgren is capable of writing. If his initial idea for PAIN was to combine synth rock and heavy metal, these are the two songs that most exemplify that dream on “I Am.”
Speaking of the composition, Tägtgren has always been a straight-ahead lyricist when it comes to PAIN, utilizing no metaphor and even less subtlety to express whatever the subject of his song is. When Tägtgren yells “suck my balls” leading into the chorus of “Not For Sale,” there’s little room for interpretation there. Coincidentally, this whole theorem of lyricism lends itself to a continuing trend in PAIN songs – they are gleefully shouted as from the mouth of an exasperated, godlike figure, who barely has enough attention to bother about the concerns of mere mortals. It’s a no-nonsense approach that occasionally treads the lines of both cringe and tedium, but Tägtgren knows the boundaries well and manages to keep his style fresh.
The issue with “I Am” is that the album never really pushes the envelope the way PAIN has in the past. The production is thick as can be (two-C thicc, as the kids say,) blasting the listener with a density of sound that is often imitated but never quite duplicated, but there never seems to be a reason why other than that’s what’s expected from PAIN.
In the end, too many of the album’s cuts sound like variations on a theme, rather than continually novel uses for industrial might. “Coming Home” was a tour de force because Tägtgren crammed a lot into a small package – the twangy, hammering blast of “Designed to Piss You Off,” the sardonic thump of “Call Me” the yearning of the title track, the insistent march of “Final Crusade.” Too much of “I Am” feels like a narrow valley of pop rock dressed in fantastic, spike-laden armor.
It's hard to call an album like this ‘hollow,’ because of the sheer cannonball of sound that is ejected at the listener at ramming speed. Still, there’s something missing here; a sense of adventure perhaps, or the daring to see what else is beyond the bounds. It is worth mentioning that “I Am” was better the second time through than the first, but don’t be shocked if “Coming Home” finds its way back into your playlist instead.
One can only speculate at the difficulties of being a band that folds so many sounds into a single whole, and shoulders the boulder of fan expectation that is made more cumbersome by the multiple ridges and sharp points of that self-same rock.
There stands Combrichrist, an Atlas-ian figure in the industrial scene, who for much of the last decade and a half, have made moves toward accessibility in their music; an ideological shift away from the pure density of industrial that has drawn the expected amount of vacuous ire from the unwashed masses, usually couched in the stigmatic phrase “sold out.”
(Parenthetically, to accuse Combichrist of catering toward a popular audience is outrageously absurd – play their previous album “One Fire,” for your high school guidance counselor and see how it resonates.)
Even the most ardent of industrial purists, upon hearing Combichrist’s newest concoction, “CMBCRST,” should have no choice but to grudgingly admit that the entire paradigm shift they so reviled without cause may have been a learning experience. Without those steps, it is nigh impossible to consider that “CMBCRST” would exist in the same form, as this new, burning furnace of metal bends the iron of the band back toward their roots, without abandoning all the recent gains.
It feels shallow to simply compare Combichrist at this stage in their careers to tentpole names from the genre, but this record is truly Andy LaPlegua and company becoming the standard bearer for industrial by combining all the successful elements of their contemporaries, while imprinting their own idiomatic maker’s mark on the style. “CMBCRST” is a synthesis of all things KMFDM, Ministry, PAIN, Fear Factory, Nine Inch Nails and yes, Combichrist.
One need not get father than the album’s second cut, “D For Demonic,” to be reminded of the best ideas that “Nihil”-era KMFDM ever had, complete with, to steal that band’s phrase, the ‘ultra-heavy beat.’ The guitar is insistent and unyielding, the beat compelling and driving, accented with the kind of end licks, sampling and distortion that one would expect from Ministry. Through it all, LaPlegua’s characteristic growl moves the narrative and ties the song firmly to the bedrock of the band playing it, thus creating a separation from those other bands while simultaneously alloying them.
There’s more good stuff to come, but right after “D For Demonic” is where this record faces its only complication – there’s a stretch of about six straight forgettable tunes right in the middle of the record. The staccato digital piercing of “Only Death is Immortal” is an interesting concept, but fades into a generic chorus. “Northern Path” is a curious interplay of brooding melodrama and metal hammering, but “Bottle of Pain” from the previous album did the same thing better. And PAIN fans will note that the opening riff of “Through the Ravens Eyes” sounds an awful lot like the opening section of that band’s single “Call Me.” (Sidebar: PAIN has also released an album recently, and we’ll hopefully discuss that next week.)
And then, “Not My Enemy,” and everything that happens from this point forward on “CMBCRST” is, for lack of a more eloquent descriptor, awesome. Starting with “Not My Enemy,” the vocal cadence and phrasing of the building wave is catchy and uniquely constructed, never mind that the backbone of this song is a pure industrial beat of the highest order. It’s quite a feat to combine a true and authentic metal breakdown with a hammering digital beat, what sounds like a drunken Speak & Spell, and also find time by merely saying “all eyes on me” to invoke fine memories of Tupac, but here we are! There’s a lot of great stuff on “CMBCRST,” but this song is the crown jewel.
The album’s other single “Planet Doom” is novel for all the inspiration it takes from Italian horror soundtracks, combining that aesthetic with a gang chorus, a heavy-handed cymbal beat and a tempo that never allows the track to linger. The album closes with the punchy and anthemic “Violence Solves Everything” a fitting coda to an album that tries to prove that point for almost an hour.
“One Fire” was a great album, a metal coming-of-age for an industrial band that was completing an evolutionary arc. “CMBCRST” takes everything learned from that record, and indeed all the steps it took to get there, and synthesizes them into this new whole, using both the novel and familiar to create a record that, if perhaps a few cuts too long, still sets a high bar for any artist who aims to make a statement in the genre. It is a worthy achievement.
It’s easy to want to like Dymytry. There’s so much about the band that just feels right. The presentation is sharp, the visuals are striking and evocative, the production on both of their albums has been top-notch, and the band’s burgeoning following in Europe should check all the boxes for a band that’s easy to fall for. Especially on the heels of their debut “Revolt,” which didn’t break any molds, but promised that with a little maturity, greatness should inevitably manifest.
There’s something missing from their new album “Five Angry Men” though. It’s damn hard to determine what that is, but there’s a spark that should ignite the flame of a passionate fandom that’s sorely lacking here.
To say that “Five Angry Men” is too calculating is wrong-headed, because no band should be criticized for having a thorough creative process. And the album certainly doesn’t lack for authenticity, the band performs these songs as though they enjoy and are committed to them. So it doesn’t sound fake, or anything truly incriminating like that. Maybe the word for this record is ‘antiseptic.’ It’s just a little too clean, a little too predictable, a little too lyrically and thematically simplistic. Having never heard the songs before, many of the lyrical rhymes and melodic permutations can be safely guessed by the listener.
That in and of itself isn’t necessarily a fault – we’ve spent pages here discussing that you can be a great artist by being transcendent at the familiar. Still, “Five Angry Men” teeters too close to a sanitized, radio-clean Five Finger Death Punch for comfort. (And it pains to mention but must be included – the chorus of “Wake Me Up (Before I Die,)” gets real Nickelback-y.)
Running down the tracklist of “Five Angry Men,” there is a temptation to brand several of the songs as store-brand versions of something else, but that’s not quite a fair criticism either, as there’s a whole stretch in the middle that resonates in a way the rest of the record doesn’t.
“Legends Never Die” is melodramatic in the extreme, and as much as that kind of affect often turns sour directly out of the carton, it works here. The rubbery guitar tone helps separate the bridge from the giant, orchestral chorus and makes for an enjoyable quasi-industrial ballad, if such a thing can exist. The record then careens into “Three Steps to Hell,” and the vaulted ceilings of “In Death We Trust,” both of which are the best examples of Dymytry flexing the muscles they use most. Sure, there’s still a template of verse-big chorus-verse that’s hard to ignore, but this run in the middle of the record is where “Five Angry Men” gives glimpses of the kind of rock-industrial fusion that Dymytry is capable of.
Yet all that sounds like damning with faint praise, and maybe it is. We talked at the end of last year about how Lord of the Lost, with their album “Blood and Glitter” finally put all the pieces together and made one great, cohesive effort. Which is to say that Dymytry sits squarely where LotL was three years ago – they keep providing enough tantalizing morsels to hope for the future, but “Five Angry Men” isn’t a coming-out party.
Here we are again - we're at the end of another year, which means it is time for the most arbitrary thing of all, which is to recap the musical arts of the year in the manner of a concise, ten-item list! Naturally, diligent readers will note that my list goes to 11, because Spinal Tap.
I usually allow my editorial blurbs to speak for themselves as far as an individual album on this list goes, but I did want to pause to the make the following assertion - as recently as the fall, I was not confident in this list, and I was notably alarmed that I hadn't managed to determine what I wanted the number one album of the year to be.
This last four weeks of dedicated music listening and review to things that caught my interest over the course of 2023 has turned around my opinion of the year entirely. There were a lot of strong efforts to be had in this calendar year, they just didn't happen to come from the usual sources. That's probably my own hubris and lack of time that accounts for what felt like personal disappointment. Luckily, hedging against my own laziness, I kept copious notes of what I thought was interesting this year, so it wasn't too terribly difficult to go back there and unearth what I feel now are the most valuable gems.
More than ever, in what was a difficult year in many ways personally, I found myself gravitating more towards albums that I simply enjoyed listening to, and away from ones that I found academically interesting or musically intricate. Bear that in mind as you read on.
First order of business, the rules: -All albums must be original studio content -No live albums -No covers albums -No re-releases -No anthologies of any kind
-No EPs (this is a little fungible, as if say, NIN's "Broken" came out this year, it is so good that it would merit inclusion. But it would take an extraordinary effort. Which is why I give away a separate EP of the Year Award.)
I first began reviewing music in a forum such as this in 2008, which is making me feel slightly nostalgic, so to catch up for new readers, here are all the albums I have ranked #1 over the years, beginning in 2011, when I did my first official year-end list: 2011 - Turisas - Stand Up and Fight 2012 - The Admiral Sir Cloudesly Shovell - Don't Hear It...Fear It! (<--the only one on this list I regret.) 2013 - Turisas - Turisas2013 2014 - Red Eleven - Round II 2015 - Shawn James & The Shapeshifters - The Gospel According to Shawn James & The Shapeshifters 2016 - Destrage - A Means to No End 2017 - The Midnight Ghost Train - Cypress Ave. 2018 - Cancer Bats - The Spark That Moves 2019 - Destrage - The Chosen One 2020 - The Heavy Eyes - Love Like Machines 2021 - Cave of Swimmers - Aurora 2022 - Rxptrs - Living Without Death's Permission
A brief mention to some artists who put out albums that merited consideration, but didn't make the cut: Phantom Elite, DieHumane, Metallica, Asinhell, Kontrust, Jason Blake, Degrave, Smokey Mirror, Children of the Reptile, Glacier Eater and FLO (though this last was released this year, it was recorded in 2004.)
Alright, I've wasted enough of your time. Let's get to it:
HONORABLE MENTION: Blood Ceremony – The Old Ways Remain
Blood Ceremony’s stylistic shift toward the retro folk-pop they experimented with on “Lord of Misrule,” is a decision that I don’t know if I would have made, but after a long absence, the band proves that their unique mix of the occult, fuzzy guitar, haunting vocals and, well, flute continues to make them a force to be reckoned with. Those who walk into this hoping for old Blood Ceremony may be disappointed, but if you keep an open mind, there’s a lot of well-constructed old-school rock to be had here.
EP OF THE YEAR: Hellevate – The Purpose is Cruelty
It’s been a long while since I enjoyed a sampling of thrash that reminded me so much of the golden days of thrash and the revival that Power Trip promised but was sadly never able to totally deliver on. Everything about this EP works, and the very fact that it is an EP works in its favor, As they say, leave ‘em wanting more, and Hellevate does exactly that. The guitars are crunchy, the vocals are edgy but restrained, the beats are good but not obsessive – it all meshes into some of the best pure thrash that’s been produced in the new millennium. This is also the best band from Kansas City since The Browning.
11 – Necropanther – Betrayal
I published the review of this album a week after its release just because I felt I needed more time with the album to really digest it and try to make something of it. It’s maybe the only review I’ve ever penned (typed? Word processed?) where I ended up scoring the album incomplete. Some six or whatever months later, with a dozen more listens, I still don’t know if I really have a grip on everything good and bad that’s happening here. But that sense of intrigue alone makes it a unique listen worthy of consideration for this list just because of its staying power. Throw in the fact that the juxtaposition of rock guitar solos with modern death metal presents as novel a sound as exists in any quantity in metal right now, and this record is worth the time.
10 – Overkill – Scorched
Another couple years, another Overkill album. Overkill may well be the thrash version of AC/DC – if you have some concept that you like Overkill, you may well like the overwhelming majority of their catalogue, and if you don’t, you probably won’t like this either. But that’s overly dismissive and doesn’t address the fact that Overkill, some twenty albums into their career, still sounds dedicated and vital. It’s hard to find that amount of professionalism within any band that’s been around so long, let alone among Overkill’s thrash contemporaries. “Scorched” stands out because Dave Linsk, long undervalued in the metal community as a guitar player, finds new avenues to control the pace of the band without losing any of their famed teeth.
9 – Lord of the Lost – Blood and Glitter
I’m so glad that Chris and I had the conversation at the end of last year about how we define a ‘year’ for the purposes of these lists. We came to the joined conclusion that any album released after the publication of the previous list should count toward the next year’s list. Lord of the Lost released this record on December 30th of 2022, and I would have been loathe to leave it without any further consideration. I’ve long been a tangential follower of the band (who’s popularity seems to only be growing after cruelly finishing last in the Eurovision song contest 2023,) but they’ve never put together a full album that made me say ‘wow’ until this one. (That said, I still don’t know if they’ve ever written a better single than 2018’s “Loreley,” but this record’s “Dead End” comes close.) Every song on this record pops in some way, finds a way to be interesting or catchy or both, and culminates in the best LotL album to date.
8 – Hellfreaks – Pitch Black Sunset
What a strange record, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s one part pop-punk album, one part rock sing along and one part screaming hardcore anthem. While those idioms are all related, none of that sounds like it should work on paper, but listen to “Old Tomorrows,” which throws in a quasi-metal breakdown, and pureblood metal solo, and you’ll see how this genre-bending, swirling mass of an album becomes so much more than the sum of its parts. This is like if Cripper and New Year’s Day tried to write an album together, but, you know…good.
7 – Royal Thunder – Rebuilding the Mountain
I am not a typical musical listener in that I have very little emotional attachment to any of the music that I enjoy. I don’t associate songs or albums with any particular feeling one way or the other (with the exception of the Destrage song “Rage, My Alibi,” for reasons I’ll keep to myself.) I say that though, to say that the emotions of an artist that they press into their music is not lost on me. And “Rebuilding the Mountain” is a deeply painful and cathartic album for Royal Thunder, and while the circumstances of the record are serious and dire, the record is so much better for the raw infusion of genuine frustration and pain and hurt and ultimately forgiveness that permeates every moment. “Now Here – No Where” will live in my head for a long time.
6 – Powerwolf – Interludium
Power just writes fun records. There may not be a metal band that does that with greater skill or sense of adventure than Powerwolf. That’s really all there is to it. The fact that they live on the outer orbits of power metal without succumbing to the cookie cutter that’s disfigured that genre forever is even better.
5 – Lucifer Star Machine – Satanic Age
A new-age Misfits? Well, no, because the songs are more than forty seconds. But that’s the vibe, and I’m here for it. To go one level deeper, there’s also a healthy dose of the Dropkick Murphys mixed in here, and I mean Dropkick Murphys from back in the “Do or Die” era, not in the last fifteen or so years. It’s the rasp in the vocals that sells that latter aspect, but this whole record bops along with gross lyrics set against the kind of accessible rock that gave birth to the entire punk movement in the first place.
4 – Robots of the Ancient World – 3737
As good a slow burn as there’s been since the first Mothership album, or Sundrifter’s “Visitations.” Less direct than the best works of The Heavy Eyes, RotAW succeeds in that this is a full-on stoner doom record that never retreats into minimalism or gets lost in jam-like wandering. That’s not an easy feat when all your songs are 6-plus minutes. “3737” is aided by the fact that it’s limited to 6 songs, one of which is a throw away interlude, so all the band’s good ideas were mashed into a few packets, rather than spread out unnecessarily. (Subtracting the throwaway, this has the same number of tracks as Hellevate’s EP, but because it still runs more than thirty minutes, qualified as an album. For those scoring at home.)
3 – Zardonic – Superstars
This is two years in a row now that a DJ has put out a metal album that cracks my year-end list (Dampf’s “The Arrival” last year.) Maybe it’s time that I just admit that I was born in the 80s and a certain degree of automatic love for electronic programming is burned into my genetic code. Still, you know why this album is here? Not to go too deep into the reeds, but this has been a tough year for me. Lot of adversity, lot of trial and tribulations that required patience to navigate. And this album makes me smile. The fun factor is even greater than the baseline for Powerwolf, since this album exists solely for the purpose of being a fun album. There’s no story here. No grand mysticism or mountain in the distance that holds the secret to the keys, or whatever the hell. “Rock and Roll Tonight” is more or less a KISS song for the 21st century, but it's just so damn awesome. In the end, if your music isn’t making you smile, or making you enjoy it on whatever level it needs to meet you at, what the hell is the point anyway? Plus, a really banging cover of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” a song that was in desperate need of a kick in the ass anyway.
2 – Kiberspassk – Smorodina
When I first heard this album at the end of December last year (it was released in January of 2023,) I was convinced I had already heard the best album of 2023. It’s been a long time since I had heard an album that was so different than anything I’d heard before. The rarest of all gems in music journalism is an album that sounds like literally nothing else in the best possible way, and Kiberspassk (who, by the way, are the same folks as in the more traditional folk band Nytt Land,) have crafted an album that combines metal, industrial, dance, folk, mythology and throat singing into a stew that it totally without peer. The single “Daleko” is as haunting and beautiful and strange and energizing as any song I’ve ever heard.
1 – Graveyard – 6
This feels a little bittersweet. This is the fifth consecutive Graveyard record to appear in my top albums of the year. And it’s the first to be ranked number one. Which, to come around, is bittersweet because I don’t think this is the best Graveyard album. “Hisingen Blues” is almost certainly better, and I think I enjoyed “Peace,” this album’s forerunner, more than I did this one. That doesn’t mean, however, that this can’t be the best album of 2023, though I do think I’m going to mentally jockey between this and “Smorodina” for years to come, and there will be days that I’m sure I will regret my decision. Still, as Chris and I talked about when we wrote the double review for this record, this is Graveyard’s most soulful, most cinematic album to date (I will cede the point that every song Truls Mörck sings, even the ones I love like “Sad Song” on this record, all have the same tone.) Really, what this comes down to is that there are no songs on this record I have any inclination to skip – they are all not only enjoyable, but unique in their own right within the context of the album. That kind of fluidity and consistency of songcraft has to count for something.
It is the worst musical moment in any music fan’s life, and yet one so common that the bare mention of it sparks immediate, rueful recognition from any person who has ever put needle to acetate, head to magnetized iron filings on a thin strand of tape, laser to disc, or ‘play’ on a stream.
That moment when a song that is so incredibly annoying it makes you utter the worst curses you can imagine, gets irrevocably caught in your head. And will not leave, no matter how you try to distract yourself.
And it’s never the whole song. It’s always one specific four-second sample that rattles maniacally in your brain, cackling at you wickedly as it integrates itself into your cherished memories, appalling fears and ardent hopes. (Sidebar: I recall with some humor a no-context text message I got from a friend a couple years back that said simply: “The saxophone part from ‘Jungle Boogie.’ On a loop. Forever.”) With that…
Kontrust. A band on the comeback trail after not releasing an album for nine years, armed with a new singer and drummer. A band that combines all the worst stereotypes of Germanic pop music (the band is from Austria,) the most ridiculous parts of Big Dumb Face, a dash of tone taken from the B-52s, and….well, parts of the best era of Nine Inch Nails, frankly.
That sounds like a concoction for pure terror, but here’s the thing…
It works.
Don’t ask me to explain why. The mere effort of trying to explain it would cause a rational person to lose all control of reality.
The only thing I can offer is that the sheer magnitude of absurdity pouring from the speakers during the band’s new album “madworld” is, as ever with Kontrust, intentional. The band came to fame in part because they famously wear full lederhosen while performing. This is meant to be boppable, feel-good industrial, if such a thing can be said to exist.
I’ve spun this record half a dozen times now, and to put all the thoughts so far together, I have most certainly walked the halls of my workplace with a small, repeating section of album opener “i physically like you,” teasing the corners of my conscious thought. And I kinda hate myself for it, but I also can’t deny that it’s so catchy that there’s some endorphin generation mixed in there as well. I can’t even listen to the song “criminal” anymore, lest I spent the next six hours muttering under my breath “highly highly sexual,” which is going to get me in trouble if I press my luck.
That’s the whole experience of ‘madworld.’ Tiny loops of beat-bopping pop industrial that poison the well of a sentient mind, making you seethe with annoyance while at the same time smiling broadly and dancing around your kitchen making lunch. The best moments strike a precise balance of all the elements. “the end“ and “u.f.i.u” are both well-constructed pop songs in metal clothing, and they work on that level to a pleasantly aggravating degree, but “only a precise hit will set off a chain reaction.” If the mix of elements is off just a little, that’s where we get “pulling,” which is too unadorned-poppy, or “black soul,” which is grating with the aforementioned affect of the B-52s.
Kontrust is at their best when they take a measured approach. I recognize the irony in saying that a band trying to juggle all these chainsaws is best when they settle down and go a little slower, but there it is. “rock to outer space” is the pinnacle achievement of “madhouse,” the song that best exemplifies all Kontrust is capable of in proper proportion. No gimmickry here, this is just a good song; it’s easy to listen to, easy to nod your head, comfortable to digest.
“madhouse” is a fun album that has great moments, but in automotive terms, this is not an everyday driver. Kontrust, perhaps as it has always been for these Austrian stalwarts, is not only an acquired taste, but one that additionally requires a specific mood to get into. Much like the best works of Primus, swallowing the whole album in a single listen is a bit of a task. Still, there’s a lot of fun to be had for the right person on the right day.
One of the trends that’s been worth tracking over the past seven or eight years of music has been the complete breakdown of genre convention. The walls that separated one genre from another, or indeed, one splinter genre from another splinter genre, are being torn down on an accelerated curve by an increasingly large collection of artists who were raised in the digital musicscape and have had occasion to sample the flavors of a myriad of different styles. Sure, there are plenty of artists out there who want to live in one world, and do so with great accomplishment and fanfare. Nevertheless, the horizon is teeming with a wave of musicians who will use any sound, bend any instrument, to find the right tone, the right feeling, the right mix.
Stepping to the front of the stage is Kiberspassk, a Siberian musical epiphany that uses witchcraft, folk arts and no small amount of black magic to at one time be industrial, metal, folk, chant and punk.
The statement of all those ingredients seems awfully definite, so let’s clarify a little – all of these are in the abstract. Kiberspassk is at once each of them, and also none of them. And then just when you think you’ve nailed down the ingredients of their new record “Smorodina,” you hear the pure rock-and-roll guitar solo of the title track, and you’re back to square one.
Leading this death’s head parade are Natasha and Anatoly Pakhalenko (yes, the same as from the folk band Nytt Land,) who have built upon their mysterious debut “See Bear” to weave an even more eclectic tale, one with greater depth and emotion and bucking of convention.
For starters, Natasha, among her other talents, is capable of traditional Mongolian throat singing, like metal fans have only come to know recently with Tengger Cavalry and The Hu. Her normal singing voice is ethereal but raw and real, full of conviction and spirit, weighted down with the pressures of trying to rationalize a challenging world around her. The added dimension of her throat singing turns Kiberspassk into something else – something more challenging, less intuitive, more otherworldly.
Challenging may be the key word to the entire experience of “Smorodina.” The album thrives on both being off-balance and keeping the listener in that same state. That makes it no less rewarding for those with the patience, but it should serve as a warning to those who think they can dive right in – the album has a lot to digest and can be acerbic; the musical variety and twists and turns do little to minimize that.
For those willing to let the album unfold for them, regardless of the track listing, they should begin with the single “Daleko.” It is the album’s most accessible piece, but also it’s most accomplished. The slow build through the strains of a folk song-like beginning evokes visions of sitting around a campfire and listening to the chant of nature in the frozen wastes of the north. That it then builds into something complex, haunting and beautiful is to the band’s credit. The sheer amount of layering built into the song creates a wall of warm but fragile sound, concurrently bright but pained.
For the more adventurous, the industrial instrumental “Vii” is a must listen. Imagine if you will that the opening of Pink Floyd’s “Time” (you know the one, with all the clocks,) was laid over a beat and pounded into a rhythm. The song runs five and a half minutes, and never really ventures far from that source, but it never feels old or gimmicky.
Everything else on the record falls somewhere in between those two goal posts, though that makes “Smorodina” sound rigidly confined when it is anything but. If “Daleko” and “Vii” are two opposing points of west and east, imagine that there is no boundary to how far north or south one could go in between those opposing points.
And the album goes in all those directions. From the near-screaming and vitriolic protest song “Ne Otdam (I Won’t Give You My Son,)” to the excellent punk-rock infused folk beat of “Morozko,” every cut on the album tries a new path and veers off on vectors that seem impossible.
Now listen, it doesn’t all work. It’s not worth singling out songs that falter, because those with different tastes might be attracted (or unattracted) to different aspects of the proceedings, but it’s hard to imagine that everything “Smorodina” lays out on the buffet table is going to be everyone’s first choice.
It seems plausible though, that everyone will find four or five cuts that really speak to them, and that’s both a credit to the inclusive genre-bending that was spoken of at the top, and also the talent of the band to seamlessly weave in so many elements that on face shouldn’t work together.
Regardless, those who are looking for something different and are not afraid to color outside the margins should spend some time with Kiberspassk’s new statement. And spin it more than once – there’s a lot to process, but it’s worth the extra effort.
We’re going to begin today’s discussion of the new Fear Factory album “Aggression Continuum” by first invoking the time-honored tenets of ‘Real Talk’ and its patron saint, R. Kelly.
<Real Talk> Not only was I fully prepared to dislike this album, but I am man enough to admit that I rather wanted to. I hold dear the classic albums of Fear Factory’s heady heyday; “Obsolete” has some of the best crowd anthems ever composed and “Demanufacture” is a timeless classic, a pinnacle achievement of the genre, nigh perfect from beginning to end. There are other moments scattered in small gatherings throughout the band’s tenure, up to and including the unforgivably infectious bassline of “Default Judgement,” a deep album cut from “Archetype” that gets caught in my head on random occasions to this very day.
All of this is balanced against the acrimony that has plagued the band since roughly the turn of the millennium, so twisted and dramatic that it would make suitable fodder for a compelling telenovela. We won’t go into the gory details here; they can be read at length with a simple query of a search engine – but we will attempt to tidily sum it up by suggesting that once and future guitarist Dino Cazares appears to be possessed of some…irredeemable character flaws.
It is these same flaws that drove me to be predisposed against “Aggression Continuum,” not out of a particular loyalty to erstwhile vocalist Burton C. Bell, but out of the respected memory of what had, classically, been Fear Factory. Much as when Tony Iommi continued calling his band Black Sabbath despite his being the only original member, or when Tom Araya and Kerry King insisted on being called Slayer despite the absence of Jeff Hanneman and Dave Lombardo, to call this band Fear Factory, with only Dino remaining, seems disingenuous. </Real Talk>
….
Damn it. “Aggression Continuum” is good. Really good. Easily the band’s best record since “Archetype” (which did not feature Dino,) and aspires even to the lofty strata of a classic like “Obsolete.”
Dino, for whatever faults he may possess as a personality, is a truly talented guitarist and instinctive riff-crafter. His ability to pull burnished steel out of the molten furnace of industrial metal has always been what separated Fear Factory from so many of their contemporaries, even luminaries like Ministry. Fear Factory’s riffs have perpetually lent just enough of a kernel of accessibility to the proceedings that it prevented the musical narrative from getting lost in the noise of the accompanying smashing and banging. So it is the case here.
Don’t be mistaken, there’s still plenty smashing and banging. The title track is one of any number of interchangeable Fear Factory songs that could have fit on any album between “Transgression” and now. For all their laudable talent, the band does have a penchant for penning a handful of songs on each effort that are simply tasteless because they hold no particular shape; they are just five minute recitals of blast beats and screaming. C’est la vie.
And yet, “Aggression Continuum” shines because much as in their best work, Fear Factory uses well-paced choruses and melodic, electronic overtones to lift their songwriting to a different plane. Such is the case with the album’s excellent opener “Recode,” which sets the stage with a bite-sized riff that is outpaced by the hypersonic electronic sample (at their best, Fear Factory’s electronics have always sounded like an adrenaline-junkie DJ is having a conniption fit, and here it is just so,) and a melodic bridge that helps give the song depth and versatility.
Let’s skip ahead to “Manufactured Hope.” There are bright moments in the intervening tracks, but this is where “Aggression Continuum” really comes alive. It is rare that a band can throw everything in their arsenal at the wall and make a real, authentic song of it, but that’s what happens here. The song blisters by at warp speed, transitioning at a blink between opening, verse, bridge, chorus, interlude, over and over again, in less time than it takes the reader to ingest this sentence. At times harsh, brittle, hopeful, angry and a hundred other descriptors, the song is the album’s best offering, even if it is to some degree physically exhausting to listen to. On an enjoyable album brimming with good moments, “Manufactured Hope” is the single ‘WOW.’
And now the flood gates are open. The album never releases the attention of the listener again, moving seamlessly into the rhythmically hammering riff of “Cognitive Dissonance,” which features as good a mosh pit-riling breakdown as Dino has written in several album cycles, but also comes equipped with a melodic chorus by Bell that resets the song both sonically and emotionally.
This flows into the excellently executed and rock-infused “Monolith,” which then sets the table for the galloping “End of Line,” which closes the album with Fear Factory’s typical dramatic and borderline orchestral flourish.
On some level, “Aggression Continuum” is just another Fear Factory record about dystopian strife and fending off some horrid, automaton-heavy technocracy. As the Ramones said, second verse, same as the first. But that’s what makes it great! This is an aural homecoming of sorts for the band, as what’s old is new again, and tricks we haven’t seen them employ in more than fifteen years are heartily embraced and folded into something new. The album is a must for all FF fans, and a great entry point for the curious. It stands as a resurrection (reference intended,) of the halcyon days of a great group. The bittersweet part is that this is a de facto swan song, as the band, as constructed on this album, will likely never produce content again. Fear Factory, as an entity, will simply become an epithet for Dino Cazares. There’s no great injustice in that – he did it to himself – but we may well be worse off for it.
