Reviews: metal

Zorglüb is a French act, founded in 1990 by Mr Loop (keyboards, samples, backing vocals) and Togk (bass, vocals, guitar, programming). Later they were joined by second guitarist Ozed. The music of Zorglüb is an energetic mixture of EBM, electro-industrial and metal. The beats are quite danceable, you get loud crossover guitars, aggressive vocals and at times a few samples and poppy elements…

Last week I received review material from Japan, Russia and Israel. Now that’s what I call an international scene? Sino is a Japanese project, which creates diverse and original electronic music. The music of Sino, a 27 year old guy, is a fusion of harsh electronics, industrial guitar sounds and uptempo ebm…

I don’t know that much about Red Square. The band consists of Neil Gauthier and Josh Kidd, while Stan Nakanishi contributes guitar on some tracks. The sticker on my review copy mentions ‘synth-industrial’ as the musical style that is practised here. The first song, ‘All for him’, is quite nice and probably the best song…

This is the debut album of the new act Antique. Apparently they were formed in Calgary, but moved to Germany last year. Combining darkwave, classical and doomdeath elements they have created quite an ambitious effort. “Book One” is also the first release of the label Trostlos, based in Munchen. At the first notes I have to think of Lacrimosa a bit, classical-inspired darkwave…

There is quite an active dark music scene in Italy. Most Italian releases I hear are stylistically either gothic rock, medieval or death industrial in style. Asylum though, founded in 1999 in Naples, offers us something different with this self-released demo cd, their third one. It features a mixture of industrial, technoid elements and ebm amongst others…

Earlier this year I already reviewed a demo by this act from Houston, which showed quite some potential. They now managed to release a proper full-lenght album. And again they display a highly varied combination of musical styles, which they acknowledge themselves by naming diverse influences such as Joy Division, Laibach, Kraftwerk, Death in June and KLF…

Distant Sun is a new act from Toronto, with a guy named Kris Leeson as its mastermind. This cdr is an advance copy of an album to be released on Hexagon Records, a label I don’t know. Their music is a mixture of loud guitars, bass and drums on the one side, and electronic/industrial elements on the other…

Dein Schatten is a new project by a guy named Dieter Bornschlegel, who I believe is active in the German music scene for about three decades now. In this period he played in numerous bands, and he has tried about every musical style imagineable. This new project aims at a place in the EBM/gothic crossover scene, somewhere between Rammstein and Joachim Witt…

Feature is new industrial act operating from Belgium. Although “Conception” is a cheap demo recording, the raw production fits the music style very good. Feature calls their music ethnic industrial, but it sounds nothing like the ethnic industrial techno of This Morn’ Omina. Feature is just plain industrial combining electronics and guitars…

From Naples, Italy came this demo cdr from the band Metharia. It contains 7 tracks and lasts about 40 minutes. Metharia consists of 5 members, with Luca Volani as the vocalist. According to the bio, in the beginning of the band Ferruccio Milanesi was the bassplayer, who we know of his work with Argine and Anima in Fiamme…

From Houston, Texas this three track cd found its way to the Funprox headquarters. It contains about 14 minutes of music, with a suprising variety of styles. Asmodeus X, so the band is called, consists of three experienced bandmembers. Marshal and Paul Fedric were formerly active in agoth/metal band called Morphine Angel…

Hardcore punk is not exactly something I listen to daily these days. In fact, it must be more than a decade ago that I regularly listened to it. Then the critical punk of the Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat and Bad Religion were amongst my favourites, or the more aggressive Exploited or G.B.H. The American band Timescape Zero also makes a traditional form of raw punk…

This is the debut album by English electropunk duo Katscan. They produce electronic mayhem of the highest quality. From the opening track Bone Saw till the last track it is evident the listener is in for some electro shock therapy. Katscan, although their music is quite original, has some similarities to KMFDM, Nitzer Ebb, Ministry and Sheep on Drugs…

It doesn’t happen too often that music from Switzerland comes my way, the only other bands I can think of right now are The Young Gods, Panic on the Titanic and Sleepwalk. Der Eremit (German for ‘the hermit’) make truly original music. The band was founded in 1995 by Gian Albertin, in 1998 their first album saw the light, “Blend-Werk”…

This band with the strange name has released a demo, with 6 tracks in less than 20 minutes. The Promonium Jesters make aggressive electronic music, combined with heavy guitar sounds, distorted vocals and strange samples. According to their website, the band already has made 8 demos and done various live shows since 1996…

At the beginning of this year I obtained this 4-track promo cassette of US band Noxious Emotion, and now (it’s about time!) I’m gonna write some words about it. As they say themselves, they make EBM in the style of early Skinny Puppy, FLA & Project Pitchfork. And it’s true, you can hear these influences…

Until I received this demo CD I had not heard of The Sepia, but when reading their bio I discovered that this band already participated in vaious projects. They made various music pieces for tv, dance, drama and other media, did some album mastering for Marc Almond and relased already a self produced album. This three piece formation from London also has quite a lot of live experience…

Oslo is the homebase of this Norwegian band, that released the album “Cold Dark Matter” a few months ago. And let’s get straight to the point (just as the album does), Red Harvest makes heavy industrial metal, not suited for too sensitive listeners…