Year: 2013

UCNX Category: Electro / Industrial Album: Replicator Stars: 3 Blurb: While hardly an essential release for UCNX, this blend of covers and remixes showcases the band’s dirty brand of electrified industrial rock quite well.   The duo of Douglas Sudia and John Monette, collectively known as UCNX, knows how to take its time to hone […]

Hopeful Machines Category: Electronic / Experimental Album: Minus Zero Stars: 4 Blurb: With all the dynamics of a film score and exploring varying modes of electronic music in a uniformly cohesive fashion, Steven Archer takes the listener through a blissful audio journey.   Steven Archer has demonstrated time and again with Ego Likeness and his […]

Hopeful Machines Category: Electronic / Experimental Album: The Spring of the Drowned Girl Stars: 3 Blurb: More an endurance test than a cohesive album, each track on this album takes the listener through varying shifts in tone and mood to satisfying if slightly disorienting effect.   In stark contrast to his work in the gothic […]

Movement Ten Category: Electro-pop Album: Build Them and They Will Come Stars: 2.5 Blurb: This deliberately paced electro-pop effort is not without its subtle merits, but the pleasures are too ephemeral and elusive to truly validate its value.   Some people might say that too much of a good thing inevitably turns sour even the […]

Kevorkian Death Cycle Category: Industrial / Metal Album: God Am I Stars: 3.5 Blurb: Time did not stand still while LA’s underground stars were gone, but this return finds the band shedding neither the raw metal aesthetic nor the electro element that defined it two decades ago.   12 years feels hardly like a hiatus […]

Tyler Newman Category: Electro / Industrial / Soundtrack Album: Zonekiller Stars: 3.5 Blurb: An immersive and dynamic soundtrack full of sci-fi atmosphere and tense action, sure to be a fine accompaniment to its corresponding film.   Almost by its very nature of creating different sounds and atmospheres, electronic music is a rather perfect accompaniment for […]

Cat Rapes Dog Category: Alternative / Electro / Punk Album: Life Was Sweet Stars: 3.5 Blurb: With enough punk energy and attitude to put to shame any scene newcomers, these Swedish rabble rousers return after a 14 year hiatus with an expected aplomb.   Since the band’s genesis in 1984, the Swedish Cat Rapes Dog […]

HECQ Category: Ambient / Experimental / IDM Album: Horror Vacui Stars: 3.5 Blurb: Marching to the beat of no one else’s than his own, HECQ once again delivers a stimulating aural experience that will have electronic enthusiasts coming back for more.   Whether composing music or enriching video games, television, and films with lush soundscapes, […]

Architect Category: Ambient / Electronic / IDM Album: Mine Stars: 5 Blurb: Daniel Myer once again asserts himself as the iconic electronic mastermind we know him as with the immersive, mind-blowing alternate reality in Mine.   Weaponizing sounds since the early ‘90s, Daniel Myer has made quite a name for himself. From the sweeping metallic […]

MINISTRY Category: Industrial / Metal Album: Enjoy the Quiet: Live at Wacken 2012 Stars: 4 Blurb: A final, fitting tribute to the godfathers of industrial/metal and the late, great guitarist Mike Scaccia giving one of the great performances of his life.   When Al Jourgensen announced in 2008 that the band’s C.U.LaTour would be the […]