Genre : Industrial / Cyber Metal
Label : Independent
Origin : Slovenia
Rating : 7.0 / 10
With Antagonist, the rabid cyborg shredders of Neurotech bring you a straightforward release of chrome clean intent, an affair that has equally well defined affection for the vulgar beauty of the robust guitar chug, and, the oh!, so many characters of the sonic landscapes drawn by larger than life synthesizer sounds. The synthetic rhetorics of brisk cuts and comforting caresses are all ready and able to team up with the bite of the album's monumental rhythm guitar, and, from this point on, there isn't a whole lot of things that can go wrong.
The affair succeeds in a convincing-, albeit not quite sufficiently mindwarping fashion when observed atop the grounds of its muscular, but largely risk free aspirations. The drive herein evidently is to invoke a tight relationship between the signature guitar chug and the synthesizers, creating an icy, sharp unity that render an apocalyptic spiritual vision bathing in a chrome-colored consciousness it likely will submit to. Yes, that cable. Plug yourself in, dudette.
Antagonist is a passionate - but not manic - act of explicit voyeur fetishism, one that scrutinizes the constant fun the immense rhythm guitars are having with the properly bloated, nevertheless elegant sonic masses invoked by an armada of superbly controlled space-synths. The inherent face of the album is ready to show itself right from the start, and that face bears marks that characterize pretty much every single track on this 41 minutes mindhack attempt. Neurotech sounds to have a keen interest in the stoic menace of mid-tempo chugging, giving you the majority of the declarations with thickly, bravely, and skillfully engineered audio weight, ready to take its time to roll a lazy and sure toll in on your neurons.
This constant, persistent presence of an elegant kind of kinetic quasi-sludge hastily and efficiently emerges as the premiere earcandy of the spin, yet the 16th minute mark might raise suspicions if the diligently delivered musical language the album rigorously sticks to has any relevant variations in store for you for its remaining portion. The presented content, while it exhibits an agenda to wage a modest invisible war for your receptors, remains super-reluctant to stroll away from its primal direction of indulging in the trusty, icy 4/4 menace of chug, synth, and cunningly simple, biomechanical percussion.
The variation, whenever it takes place in this intentionally confined stylistic space, finds a good amount of full tissue mechamusculature in its grateful host, and fortunately scarce are the times that you will find yourself entirely unaffected by the stimuli, as its raw restlessness does a good job of keeping your awareness engaged. The compositions themselves reign in a well balanced spot between industrial goth gloom - without the bitterness, luckily - and a playful kind of doom that has more interest in winking secretly to the visceral feel of non-fantasy related power metal, than to submit to a casual abyss its dramatic originator is fond of making love with.
As a consecutive complementary tool of great importance, you will need a rigorous propensity to envision - usually - grave perspectives in a narrative fashion while in the intimate vicinity of armed microphones. Actual singing, this time, truly is not that important, as the current Neurotech musical direction is hard-wired - hah! - to the mere pulse of its own fabric, and pitch based singing, funnily enough, would harm this experience. The vocalist does an acceptable job, delivering the mildly effected crow-like spouting you have heard a million times before, but it still remains way more enjoyable to listen to than to hear over the top angst or metalcore screams getting splashed in your face, ending up as obstacles in the way of the restless-relentless chug-exploitation patterns.
Antagonist is a spin worth checking out, and it seems to be advisable to take just two or three pills at one sitting / rampaging, as the album packs a truly effective explosion when it starts, but, since the whole album is an explosion, you want some flesh to remain on your exoskeleton, so you will have the chance to burn down proper later with the yet again hungry curiosity on board. A decent declaration to the ears, let thy proprietors be made of spirit, flesh, machine - or something : in between.
Rating : 7.0 / 10
If you liked this article, check out my music
and / or
Buy me beer.
No comments:
Post a Comment