Sybreed - The Pulse of Awakening

January 27, 2010

Reviewer: Dinah

Industrial and metal have some key comparable traits. Much of it, to the general populace, is unlistenable; both can achieve a depth of rage of which other genres can only dream; and fans of neither appreciate the dumbed-down versions that mainstream media has tried to feed to naïve, unsuspecting twelve-year-olds at the mall. I’m a firm believer of electro-industrial influences in metal.  It was meant to be.

But with Sybreed’s album The Pulse of Awakening, it isn’t. The songs are less industrial metal and more metal plus electronic flair. It sounds more like they added effects in post production than programmed them along with the instrumentation. The synthetic elements are bland and unoriginal; the few glances of industrial that could not have been better achieved by a guitar or a keyboard are stock effects (such as the ‘laser cut’ sound heard in the first, very weak song “Nomenklatura”, as well as most club industrial songs). There are ways to use these effects that are original and innovative, but those methods cannot be found here. The vocals very often seem to be around the same speed and key no matter which song they’re on. The melodic singing found first on “Nomenklatura” and continually throughout the CD drags the instrumentals down even when they are fast paced and distracts from any interesting points in the music. The growly singing as found on “Electronegative” and in a few other places is astoundingly better and provides a frankness and an emotive rawness that is refreshing in what is otherwise a mess of generality. Still, the fantastic growl singing eventually gives way to an interlude by the droopy melodic vocals, which breaks the flow of the song and weighs it down. The result is a generic mess that drowns its own brief points of light.

Release Date: Nov. 16, 2009-Europe
February 2010-US
Label: Listenable Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  Nomenklatura
2.  A.E.O.N.
3.  Doomsday Party
4.  Human Black Box
5.  Kill Joy
6.  I Am Ultraviolence
7.  Electronegative
8.  In the Cold Light
9.  Lucifer Effect
10.  Love Like Blood
11.  Meridian A.D.
12.  From Zero to Nothing

Total playing time:  60:12

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