seven

this comp hits closer to the industrial genre than the previous one. the lineup features a lot less dinosaurs of the genre and a few tracks are actually quite nice. majority of the material comes from gashed!, inception records and gun music.

still, most of the disk with its design, booklet notes and lineup reminds too much of the old school days of traditional industrial. but the old attitude and the familiar rehashed words just don't do it anymore. pretty much the same goes for the music, that with few rare exceptions, sound at least two-three years old. as far as those few successful tracks go, I was impressed with catchy interpretation of familiar electro motives done by project-x - heavy-hitting high-bpm dark electro with interesting vocals. railgun's "near future statistic" was a nice mix of broken abrasive rhythms, samples and twisted melodies - a rich and strange mixture that never ceased to be interesting and intriguing. following "motoko 2501" by takshaka (nicely using vocal samples) was yet another outstanding track. it was bult around slow abrasive crashes, static outbursts and distant gorgeous chorus contrasting the main mechanized theme. takshaka vs. snog ("the future") had a nice beat structure, but overall this mix was rather uneventful.

the rest of the compilation was quite bleak - starting with poor mix of flesh field's "utopia", disappointing with "[versificator.flux]" by monstrum sepsis (although the fact that it was done back in 1997 could be accepted as an excuse). as expected, cenobita produced a fairly well-done copy of hocico's sound. negative format's own edit of "distant pulses" was catchy yet very plain and unimaginative. (although they did a good job on god module's "denial" mix). unfortunately, digital blood, elf, injury, painfetish did not have any impressive tracks to add to this compilation.

it would have helped if the lineup of this compilation was more thought out and consistent (probably more in-depth scene research would have helped). the choice of the tracks is somewhat questionable, and while the general idea might justify this mix of styles, I doubt it would work out very well musically.