Realm of Shadows is Midnight Syndicate’s second full length
release. The band that makes soundtracks for
movies that do not exist have managed to pull off another
creepy, pseudo-Beethoven from hell experience in a jewel
case.
This twenty-one track Halloweenesque experience from
Entity Productions invites you to “Venture to the Realm of
Shadows where restless spirits arise from unknown
depths to wander the shores of night”. Galvin Gozka and
Edward Douglas create some very interesting (cheesy in
some parts) tracks and my only real issue is with the short
lengths of each track – the longest is five minutes. If you
are into background tunes, Halloween parties, or making
b-rated horror movies, you should already be on your way
to get this.
Personally I enjoy it whenever I listen to it, but it’s the sort
of CD that can only be taken in small doses. I would not
recommend placing it on repeat – it will get irritating
around hour four. – Azriel J. Knight
Category: Issue 03
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Midnight Syndicate – Realm of Shadows
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Karl Mohr – The End of the Line
Karl Mohr’s ‘The End of the Line’ suffers from a malady that
strikes too many albums. There is one really killer song on
the album, and then it falls flat. The opening song on the
CD, “Unidentified Flying Object” is a great song, with driving
chuggy guitars and dirgey drums leading the way backed by
well timed and nicely produced electronics. There is also a
German language version of the song here to close out the
CD, “AuBerirdisches Wesen, UFO”. It is an interesting way
to bring together the songs on the CD as an album. Many
bands have tried in the past to use the same keyboard line
or guitar riff in a number of songs to give their album a
cohesive theme and sound, and it works on albums like
Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ and ‘The Downward Spiral’ by Nine
Inch Nails. Recording the same song in another language is
an intriguing idea, and it works well here, if only for the
break the second version of the track provides from the rest
of the CD.
The following songs are a strange mix of experimental
electronic instrumentals and poetry. In a way, ‘The End of
the Line’ reminds me of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, only much
more abstract and without the feeling of a cohesive concept
album. Some of the songs almost sound like pop songs,
such as “Kleines Feuerstuckchen”, though I really have no
idea what the song is about since I don’t speak German.
“Have You Seen My Rabbit?” stands out as a depressive
lullaby for Pugsley and Wednesday Addams. “Can Your
Remains Be Buried With Mine?”, which I assume to be the
ballad on the album, is more depressing than any song I
have ever heard, despite the circus-themed musical
instrumental in the middle of the song. It sounds like a
musical lobotomy, only with less energy.
“The End of the Line” is one of the strangest albums I
have ever listened to. Between the two versions of
“Unidentified Flying Object”, it’s just too slow and
depressing for my tastes. Don’t get me wrong, some of the
songs are not too bad. “Blown Away” is a pretty decent
song, with a bit of a Mazzy Star-esque shoe gazing quality
to it. It offers a bit of a break from the rest of the CD’s
depressive electro-goth dirge, as does “Rock and Roll
Robot” – a fairly good electronic track in the same vein as
Daft Punk’s ‘Homework’ album. Still, on this CD the bad
outweighs the good by at least a few pounds. – chris parasyte -
Lycia – Tripping Back Into The Broken Days
When I gave away my Metallica CD’s and traded them in for
more underground gothic music a few years back, one of
the bands that I fell for, and just could not get enough of,
was a band called Lycia. Arguably the first darkwave band
in existence, since the head of the label they are cradled
under coined the term, that man is Sam Rosenthal, that
label is Projekt.
A couple years ago Lycia called it quits, a project
blossomed from the confusing year of 1988 when goth was
in one of it’s many transitions. But Lycia was not gone for
good, for they have released a new album, entitled “Tripping
Back Into the Broken days” and yes, the rest of this text is
on that album, so read on my friends, and learn all about
the continuation of this legend.
For those of you who are familiar with Lycia’s older material,
you are in for quite a treat. Lycia has boiled their music
down to the basics, and discovered the power in simplicity.
All tracks consisting of acoustic guitars with ambient
backing and ethereal vocals from both Mike and Tara
Vanportfleet. Our opener is also our title track, TBITBD
sounds very much like a welcome back message, this was
my impression when the CD first spun in my hard drive.
Every track thereafter has intense feeling, melody and
meaning. Most songs deal with the artists battle with illness
and sometimes poverty, something many of us can relate
to. This isn’t some bullshit like the Backstreet Boys whining
about loneliness – this is genuine.
Some of the most memorable tracks include Fades Down
Far, It’s Okay to be Small, and the title track, Tripping Back
into the Broken Days.
This music has a feeling of being ageless, therefore I
believe nearly anyone can, and will, enjoy it. – Azriel J. Knight -
Absurd Minds – Deception
Project Pitchfork’s latest offering is a pretty decent album
called Deception. It sounds pretty much par for the course
for Project Pitchfork, and fans of the band shouldn’t be let
down. The music is pretty well written, as usual, with the
signature sound fans of the band have come to know and
love over the past decade or so. Peter Spilles’ vocals are a
bit rougher on Deception than on other Project Pitchfork
albums such as Eon:Eon or Chakra: Red!, delivered with a
bit of an aggressive growl this time around.
Oh, sorry, wait a second. Now that I take a closer look, I can
see that this isn’t Project Pitchfork at all. It’s the N*Sync to
Pitchfork’s Backstreet – Absurd Minds. Listen to this album
and you’ll see how I could get the two confused.
All kidding aside, Deception is a good album. Sure, it
sounds like it was pieced together from the loose bits of
tape lying around on Peter Spilles’ studio cutting room floor,
but it’s pieced together very well and is an enjoyable album
all around. – chris parasyte -
Emperor – Prometheus
Sadly, this is the final release by this great band – and what
a farewell it is. They’ve managed to one-up every other
black metal band with this release,
Prometheus captures the best of their previous works while
making progressions in style, technicality and ferocity. The
production is great, showcasing all the musical elements. I
wasn’t aware before of how good a drummer Trym is, his
playing is unbelievable, blasting away into emptiness. As
usual the guitar playing is amazing straying from brutal
black/death metal riffage to some prog/jazz elements. Wow!
Brutality and melody intertwined with symphonic guitar
orchestrations equally perplexing and entrancing, what a
fitting end to a brilliant career. All hail Emperor! – Greg Manz -
Devin Townsend – Terria
Yep, Devin’s done it all, from singing for Steve Vai to
playing guitar for Front Line Assembly, and so on and so
forth, so I’m gunna shut up because everyone knows
about all that shyte already. This is the newest release
under his own record label, recording along with
drummer Gene Hoglen, who has continued to work with
Devin since the production of the Strapping Young Lad
album ‘City’. This album doesn’t sound nearly as
drowney as Physicist, nor as popish as Infinity. But like
most of the other recording, it does have its lame
moments.
Most recommended tracks would be Earth Day and the
Fluke (despite that it sounds punky in the beginning). – Brooke Chaisson -
MortIIs – The Smell of Rain
“What the fuck?”
It’s a pretty common reaction to Mortiis, both visually and
musically. In the past, any time I’ve played Mortiis’ music for
a friend or shown them a picture or his web site, the
response has usually been something along the lines of a
baffled look of confusion or revulsion.
Mortiis is a weird guy. He looks like a demonic elf, with long
prosthetic pointy ears, a hooked nose, heavy makeup and a
wardrobe that makes KISS look like Weezer. On past
albums, such as ‘Crypt of the Wizard’ or ‘Keiser av en
Dimension Ukjent’ (which loosely translated means
‘Emperor of a Dimension Unknown’), his music was nothing
short of epic instrumental. Mortiis produced soundtracks for
slaying orcs in a darker world (or at least a Playstation
RPG).
Then, with ‘The Smell of Rain’, something changed. Gone
are the long instrumentals. Gone is the sense of epic
adventure and consequence. Gone is the enveloping feeling
of the fantastic the music of Mortiis once instilled.
We’ve entered Mortiis: Era 2.
‘The Smell of Rain’ starts like any other Mortiis album could
be expected to start – the opening track, “Parasite God”,
begins as a strange sounding electronic keyboard line with
a dark tone to it plays a somber tune. Twenty-two seconds
later, the bass drum kicks in, and Mortiis fans say “What the
fuck?” At 1:27, Mortiis fans realize why he’s never put vocal
tracks on his albums before. Mortiis really can not sing very
well at all.
Yet his staccato vocal delivery style seems to fit with the
music on this album, which is a strange mix of Mortiis’ own
brand of electronic opus and Sisters of Mercy influenced
goth rock. While the music on this album is unlike anything
Mortiis has ever really done before, with his solo projects
or during his days with black metal band Emperor, ‘The
Smell of Rain’ is actually a pretty decent album musically.
The vocals are, perhaps fortunately, recorded at a rather
low level in the mix on most of the songs. Not only is
Mortiis a poor singer, he’s also not a great songwriter by
any stretch. There are some pretty awful lyrics on here,
more or less reminiscent of some of the early bootleg Nine
Inch Nails demos.
When you look at the list of artists Mortiis thanks for
inspiration this time around (including Nine Inch Nails,
Enigma, Moby, Vangelis, horrible 80’s synth pop, Rob
Zombie, Tool, KMFDM, The Sisters of Mercy and many
more), it’s almost understandable why this album sounds
the way it does. Key word: “almost”. How any artist can
make a departure like this from their old style of music is
never easy to understand, unless they’re going after Top
40 rotation like Apoptygma Berzerk seems to be doing.
‘The Smell of Rain’ is not going to hit mainstream radio
charts, and Mortiis won’t be on MTV any time soon. It is a
pretty decent album, despite its campy lyrics and almost
schizophrenic musical composition. Fans of industrial,
darkwave, goth rock and dark synth pop will all be able to
find something on this CD they can enjoy. – chris parasyte -
Perdition – Nothing Else Remains
Perdition is a band that hails from Toronto. Now I’m not
really all that aware of how much this band is representative
of the Toronto Goth/industrial scene but if we are to believe
the bio and press kit that accompanied this release then
they are apparently redefining it. Realistically Perdition can
only lay claim to being a very mediocre goth/metal/EBM
hybrid, ruling ruthlessly over maybe their apartment block at
the very best.
Over the years I’ve heard too many Goth bands to
remember and the one thing I’ve learnt is that vocals make
or break this kind of music. The female vocalist is touted as
having taken vocal lessons (apparently opera training too).
Well I’ll tell ya her teachers were very kind to encourage her
to be a singer – kind to her but not to us. For the most part
her vocals are the weakest part of this release. The lead
vocalist is alright – he delivers an earnest performance while
hitting enough notes to make it passable. I hate to harp on
one thing but the female vocalist damn near ruins every
song she sings on except maybe the song, “Narrow Eyes,”
which musically is a nice little EBM-ish number, which if the
vocals were better could do well in clubs.
I could go on and on about what’s wrong with this CD,
things like line noise at the end of songs, clunky drum
programming, a cheesy metal guitar sound, some truly
useless re-mixes and on and on and on…
Despite all these negatives there are a few songs that I find
myself going back to. First off there is, “Sorry,” which is a
mid tempo Gothic rock tune with a good serpentine baseline
and catchy chorus’ topped off with a crunchy ending.
Next up is “Empty Promises”. It starts with a bludgeoning
metal intro, then slides into Gothic metal dirge territory,
which just builds and builds until – alas, she sings some
backing bits. Oh well, I still like this song. Lastly there’s the
best remix on the CD of the song, “I’m not the one,” this is a
neat electro version of the original reminding me of mid-era
Skinny Puppy. In summation, if you were to rate this CD by
the percentage of good songs to bad it would be a 2.5 out of
10, which is somewhat unfair, as it doesn’t represent this
release as a whole – but it would be tempting to rate it that
way. I guess nothing else remains to be said, sigh… – Greg Manz -
Absurd Minds – Damn the Lie
The second verse the same as the first – Absurd Minds
return with their second full-length CD of Project Pitchfork
influenced EBM. It’s a good thing Deception was a really
good CD, because Damn The Lie shows little evidence of
artistic growth in terms of song writing, composition or
thematic. The songs on Damn The lie are well produced,
and well written, but they really just stay the course as laid
out on the previous CD.
While it is an enjoyable album to listen to, it really doesn’t
break any new ground. It’s good, but not great. If Absurd
Minds can just break out of this trying to sound “More
Pitchfork Than Pitchfork” mentality they seem to be set
into, and work towards a more unique sound of their own,
they could be one of the groups to watch in the next few
years. – chris parasyte -
Midnight Syndicate – Gates of Delerium
The third installment from this duo who create gothic/horror
soundtracks for movies that do not exist. For those who
loved their first two releases, Born of the night and Realm of
Darkness, you will not be disappointed. Then again, you
may be, for the same reason. There are not many surprises
on this release, everything is well done, from the production
to the artwork, and yes, even the music! But don’t expect
any drastic changes. This is great background music for
horror houses or anything related to Halloween. – Azriel J. Knight
