Reviews by markjazz

When I first heard this album I rated it a 3/5 and now it's a solid 4/5. There isn't a whole lot I don't like on this album. There's some catchy fast tracks, slow dark ones and I like the fact that both Philippe Fichot and Éliane P. sing on the album, unlike Inhuman which can get a bit tiresome after the half way point just hearing Éliane P. the whole time. My favorite tracks on here are the ghostly haunting ones No Future and Poison II, which was on the 2001 reissue. This album gets a lot of play and it's one of my favourite early releases from this group.

"Consider your origin;
you were not born to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge." - Dante

Well this is my first taste of this group and I'm very impressed. I love the orchestration of the songs and the constant blasting beats. The music that connects tracks 4 and 5 is just awesome and scares the piss out of me. Not a huge fan of the high pitched operatic singing but I can look past that. The piano on this album is awesome, especially on The Forsaking and The Oppression. The insert is kind of a let down. If I want to know the definition of "Deceit" I can look it up and obviously having the lyrics instead would have been way better.

It's hard to review an album like this because I don't own much of this type or genre, but I love Enya. Out of all the albums she's done in her long career I would still have to pick this as my favorite. I like nearly every track on here and the insturmental track Fallen Embers is done right scary sounding too! My favorite track on the disc is still One by One. The notes that carry with her voice are perfect, as they usualy are, but this track seems to speak to me for some reason and I play it often. People say this album was boring and to slow but it's new age music. It's suppose to evoke moods through music so if it manages to do that then I think the album did its job. It did for me.

I remember buying this because I had read that Mark Spybey had listened to it once while driving up the side of a mountain volcano and he described it so well I thought I'd give it a whirl. This was about 10 years ago and I'm still glad I bought it. I don't own much art-rock but this album is beautiful and after hearing Brian Eno's ambient material I was surprised at how diverse it was. His voice is often draggy but it has its own unique quality to it that I love, especially on the track I'll Come Running. He also has an odd asortment of tools he uses in this album to add a bit more of an experimental flavour to it, like a bending saw blade for example. There isn't really any crappy tracks on here and each one provides a well deserved listen. Probably one of my favorite is the title track which I wish was longer. I've yet to hear his other art-rock material but I should get off my butt one day and buy some because I love this one a lot. Maybe it's he best album but I doubt that. An artist in the true sense of the word!

After hearing the hype about this project I finally gave this one a listen and I wasn't overly impressed. I love Hocico but I found this album to be a mix of that project and then some Hardcore Converter sounding tracks mixed in. Doesn't flow well at all. I do love a couple tracks on here though, like Humid Dreams, but overall it doesn't seemed as focused as thier main project. Nothing to ignor though.

This release is very special to me as it was my favourite album when I was in highschool, which means I was an outcast because everyone else loved Smashing Pumpkins and Seal, or whatever was in the Top 40. Anyway, this is still some pretty groudbreaking and unique sounding industrial after all this time. It's a good mix of hard pounding industrial, with tracks like Possession and Glassblower. There's soft melodic industrial with H Sien Influence and Base Metal. Experimental tracks with the last two and even techno cyberpunk with the track Outafter. Interesting fact about that track was that it was dedicated to the actor Brandon Lee and this group had actually recorded the track in 1993, before his death, and it sat on the shelf waiting to be released until this album. There's some really beautiful music on this album. I had put the track Suni C on a mix tape for this girl and she told me that the ending was so pretty, after hearing this harsh fast beat, she had tears in her eyes. Powerful stuff this group had.

I still prefer the Furnace album over this one as I don't really care for a couple tracks on here, like Seven Plagues and the title track, but it's still a very solid release and after this album the sound would do a complete 180 degree turn and sound pretty much like their side project PlatEAU. Not that that's bad but they should have just changed the band name or something because it throws off new listeners. You have very harsh industrial albums and 2 EP's soon followed with this flower techno music. Pissed me off when they did it.

After over 10 years I still think this EP, and the album with it, is groundbreaking. The remixes for this EP are worth the purchase alone. Haujobb does his usual perfection for the Attalla remix, which is far better than the Biosphere one in my opinion. Track 4-6 and 8 are pretty much filler tracks and deal with the noiser side of Download while still maintaining some musical sound. And let's not discredit the artiwork which is oddly beautiful. I bought this album when it came out while I was in highschool and I actually had the track Glassblower played over the school PA. Needless to say most didn't like it but it was a 3 minute wet dream for me.

This is a very well done EP and a good follow up from the amazing album Furnace. It states that the Omniman is a remix on here but it sounds exactly the same as the one from Furnace so I'm not sure what the remix is a remix of. It's as awesome track none the less. The versions of Noh Mans Land are more like re-edits with various drum patterns and samples placed in to make each version a bit different. I enjoy them all personally. The epic track Energy Plan is pretty cool to just chill out and listen to and it's not harsh at all and gets a bit repidative but I find myself never skipping it. The remix of Attalal by Biosphere is fairly boring and the only real negative about this EP. My favourite track on here is Microscopic simply because of very unique sounding drums and I've always been a fan of Genesis P-Orridge and he puts a ton of emotion into his vocals on this track. He first spouts off this little poem and then there's a cool deep voice that comes in mixed with his own. Even his yelling at the end is awesome! Like the final track in Furnace, Papa Papa Mula Cwm is pretty much a Dead Voices on Air track and ends the EP out nicely.

I really enjoyed the Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, but this one, not so much. A lot of has to do with the production I think. It's so wishy washy. The music is not to bad. Like the opening track Alt lys er svunnet hen, it has a beautiful opening and the music kicks ass but again, it sounds like it was recorded in a garage. I own the reissue so you would think they would have fixed the production problems. I think I would give this release a 3.5/5 easily if these problems were fixed. The organ in this album is awesome, just to mention, it's some of the best Symphonic keys in metal out there and it still holds up very well 13 years later! Sorgens kammer is pretty much a non-metal song with some great piano and organ but this totally slows the album down as it's over 6 minutes long. This is a type of song that needs to be either at the end or the beginning of a metal album. If it was like 2 minutes I wouldn't mind, like most symphonic metal albums. As all these tracks are pretty good I won't do a track by track review but this is some great symphonic metal and the lack of production in this album won't keep me from exploring this group further, that's for sure.

An excellent Digital Poodle release overall. "Combat" and the remix are both solid tracks and give the one-two punch for the "War" feeling of this EP. "Red Star" is an absolute classic and is probably the best track they ever did. You can't understand the lyrics much, but the music is killer. The track "Slow Crack" is what it states, a slower and more melodic track than the original titled "Crack" from the album Division!. The only real weak track on the album is "Funkass". Not much variation and weak output overall.