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Archived Reviews
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In an age of sound-alike bands, it’s always refreshing to hear something original, and it’s just as refreshing to hear something from a band that aren’t too afraid to experiment with different sounds, and make a good job of it. This is the case with Psychaesthetic. An Industrial band that have given us an album that manages to fuse together so many different sounds, it manages to stray from the Industrial path without losing sight of its roots. This is no mean feat. Male fronted vocals are the order of the day here, and the music draws on many Industrial influences, some hard rock ones, and is liberally topped off with some EBM-esque beats. The vocals are clear cut, listenable, and easy to understand. They are woven into the music nicely – even where the music is at its harshest (‘A Polemic’ for example), the vocals are not shouty or jarring. This is a mistake that most bands make (harsh music = harsh lyrics), so it’s nice to hear a band that have not fallen foul of this common mistake. The beats on most of the tracks are obviously electronic – no one could drum that fast and succinctly – and this adds to a polished sound for the album. The guitaring (fully electronic and with severe rock/metal leanings), is equally as crisp and ‘clean’, and adds a valuable element to the music. The use of distortion is well played on this album – the track ‘Minefield’ is a good example of this, with opening vocals and guitar paving the way for another quality assault on the senses. What goes to make this album so good, is tracks such as ‘Aura’ – a docile and yet powerful track with its keyboard leading intro, and lack of vocals. This is a worthy instrumental that goes to showcase the bands talent some more. Following this is ‘The Rains’ – a serious dance floor filler if ever there was one. This is a rampaging, modern and progressive powerhouse of a track. Beats and guitars lead the way, and I defy you not to move when you hear this number. While all the tracks on here are varied enough to hold your interest, it’s nice to say that I cannot easily say that Psychaesthetic sound like band x or band y – they are good enough to carve their own niche, and I have to say that this is not just down to some talented music making. It’s obvious that the mixing and production of the album has a major part to play in its brilliance. The way that each track is sown together, mixed and packaged really goes a long way to show the level of talent and skill on offer from this band. But better than this, you can chose to listen to this album in two ways – let it play way in the background, or listen to each track intently. Whatever you choose, it will bring you (listening) pleasure either way. I have to admit that for me the best track on the album is the electronic ‘The Binary Age’ – this clinical Kraftwerk-esque track, with some nicely laced in guitaring and beats is just very listenable, despite the ‘hidden’ track at the end of it – not a great fan of this sort of thing as you know, but because the rest of the album is so good, I’ll let this one pass. Given the state of he scene currently, you’d be a fool not to check this band out. They’ve got what it takes by the bucket load, and this album will not fail to reward the listener. Buy it! |
