seven

after listening to a demo like "nuclear offender" it becomes even more obvious that, despite popular opinion, it takes a good musician to write good power noise. recently many power noise acts out there that start their music career in this genre lacking exposure and background to make truly interesting music, contributing to bad stereotypes that plague the genre.

in case of pulse-8 it is obvious that your are dealing with an accomplished musician experimenting with new sounds, taking his music to a different level. on this demo you are presented with 5 solid tracks that could be regarded as essence of rhythm'n'noise at the same time incorporating ebm/industrial roots as well as more technoid influences.

very percussion-oriented, this project seems to move the same way as bands like converter do taking the best from the world of ebm/industrial and moving into power noise scene. the mix is intense audio assault with best elements from the both worlds. strictly speaking, it is not pure power noise, but more technoid-influenced rhythmic noise-filled music.

the demo starts out with "retribution" which is a killer percussion-driven madness, heavy, distorted and powerful. aggression and force of this track quickly let you know what you are dealing with.

"risk factor" continues, and it is one of the fastest and severe percussion assaults where the whole track is build around layers of driving beats and swirling saturated noises. skull-splitting smashing percussion, corroded noises; noise assaults last for several moments and then are replaced with quieter pieces. a great addition is presence of cold synthline that appears by the end of the track creating an excellent contrast with the music.

"police state" is next, staring out with epic atmospheric beginning; there is a nice contrast between bursts of feedback and atmospheric elements. high-pitched keys and massive brutal beats that slowly breath on the background somehow resemble purity and intensity of suicide commando's sound, but taken to a more dense and experimental level. the track slowly gains complexity and power; heavy percussion overlaps with charged static pulses.

"disorder" starts out with great soundtrack atmospheric beginning and then breaks down into technoid loops that erupt between the moments of static. more conventional ebm-like loop builds up and then charges into fast and dense technoid assault. a great blend of technoid rhythms, dislocated ebm percussion and noisy elements. the tracks slowly dies out at the end.

"the end of it all" starts out with a slow corroding atmosphere with cold bubbling sounds. the percussion on this track is especially nice - distant very mechanized hollow beats perfectly mixing with gorgeous mysterious synthline. it is very elegant combination and this is probably one of the more unusual and interesting passages that is both danceable and heavy. it is more emotional and simple than the rest of the album, but plenty of variation built around the main theme easily makes up for it.

constant variation on this demo is something that you notice right away - it might not necessarily fit within the conventional electro/ebm genre, but is superb in here, keeping listener's attention. it is sometimes hard to distinguish between different tracks, because each one encompasses many differences and often lacks central theme and tempo that will make it easily distinguishable. after over a week of non-stop listening the only complaint I could come up with was that atmospheric parts is something that pulse-8 should play with; also couple of tracks slowly died out at the end, when the listener could expect something more interesting.

with a demo of this quality the band should have no problem getting signed as soon as the disc is sent out to the labels.