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REVIEWS
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Darkest Night Ever (Intro)
Unsane
Trick or Treat (We're Coming to You)
Tragic Toll
Gnomes Bones
Aloisa (Slumber of Death)
Passage into the Future (Intro 2)
ElectroZombie
Can't Return Home
Holograms of Sorrow
Plasmic Snow
Electrostatic Forms
Special Grave Town
Refuge to an Eternal World (Outro)
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REVIEWS
Spectrum-X
Darkest Night Ever
Darkest Labyrinth
Posted: Tuesday, October 07, 2008
By: Dillon Carlyon
By: Dillon Carlyon
An unearthly combination of goth, industrial, and metal, this is music to rise from the grave to.
From Chicago to Italy, Spectrum-X has been making music since 2004. Released on the Japanese label Darkest Labyrinth, their second album, Darkest Night Ever delivers a heady and harsh combo of male and female vocals, guitar, and fast beats, all framed by smooth electronic highlights. The musical style would probably be best described as industrial metal, though the overall assemblage of instrumentation and vocals seem to owe a great deal to nü-metal.
The intro is impressively creepy and sets the stage for a haunted adventure with a demonically distorted chant. "Unsane" opens with a high, broken, rapid synth line and is quickly joined by heavy male vocals, fat guitar, and fast, unrelenting drums. "Trick or Treat (We're Coming to You)" introduces additional female vocals and is a much slower piece that creates discord between the vocals and the instrumentation, the latter of which is almost exclusively guitar. "Gnomes Bones" has a much more club friendly sound, starting off with an electronic four-by-four beat and adding mid-level synths, while the male and female vocalists trade on and off, delivering lyrics that are full of offbeat gothic humor. "Aloisa (Slumber of Death)" begins with a more industrial style of guitar and moves back and forth between the chaos of the hard male vocals and the smooth darkly atmospheric female vocals. "Spacial Grave Town" has the most energy of all of the tracks on Darkest Night Ever, combining another fast addictive synth line with a well blended mix of guitar on both the high and low ends of the note range.
This release does some things excellently and other things not so well. The electronic element is fresh and fairly creative, while the vocals are stereotypically nü-metal aside from the additional female vocals, which swings the overall sound in a more gothic direction. The guitars are staid and do very little to develop the songs, but something new is frequently done with the drumming from song to song, which serves to make the otherwise repetitive formula more interesting. The lyrics are often deliberately silly and comedic, which will appeal to some fans and quickly turn off others. Overall, Spectrum-X's sound in Darkest Night Ever comes across as still being somewhat immature. Nevertheless, there is a lot of experimental spirit here, and fans of nü-metal as well as those who like their goth and industrial crossed with elements of heavy metal may want to check this album out.
The intro is impressively creepy and sets the stage for a haunted adventure with a demonically distorted chant. "Unsane" opens with a high, broken, rapid synth line and is quickly joined by heavy male vocals, fat guitar, and fast, unrelenting drums. "Trick or Treat (We're Coming to You)" introduces additional female vocals and is a much slower piece that creates discord between the vocals and the instrumentation, the latter of which is almost exclusively guitar. "Gnomes Bones" has a much more club friendly sound, starting off with an electronic four-by-four beat and adding mid-level synths, while the male and female vocalists trade on and off, delivering lyrics that are full of offbeat gothic humor. "Aloisa (Slumber of Death)" begins with a more industrial style of guitar and moves back and forth between the chaos of the hard male vocals and the smooth darkly atmospheric female vocals. "Spacial Grave Town" has the most energy of all of the tracks on Darkest Night Ever, combining another fast addictive synth line with a well blended mix of guitar on both the high and low ends of the note range.
This release does some things excellently and other things not so well. The electronic element is fresh and fairly creative, while the vocals are stereotypically nü-metal aside from the additional female vocals, which swings the overall sound in a more gothic direction. The guitars are staid and do very little to develop the songs, but something new is frequently done with the drumming from song to song, which serves to make the otherwise repetitive formula more interesting. The lyrics are often deliberately silly and comedic, which will appeal to some fans and quickly turn off others. Overall, Spectrum-X's sound in Darkest Night Ever comes across as still being somewhat immature. Nevertheless, there is a lot of experimental spirit here, and fans of nü-metal as well as those who like their goth and industrial crossed with elements of heavy metal may want to check this album out.
