Unter Null
Sick Fuck EP
Alfa-Matrix
Posted: Wednesday, March 29, 2006
By: Michael Brown
At last, a strong female has made her mark on the EBM scene, injecting venom into what has recently become a stale genre. Beware; our sexy she-devil shouts louder than any industrial animal on the scene! Unter Null is more and more often described as the female replica of the Suicide Commando league. Her extremely distorted and manipulated vocals will definitely blow your mind. Hailing from Seattle, Erica Dunham has vocals that rival Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow, but over music that sounds like Tactical Sekt put through the industrial grinder. The Sick Fuck EP is mainly for DJs as Alfa-Matrix have packaged it in a deluxe DVD style case. Making an impression on the club dance floor and appearing all over many top compilations, she is sure to be the next big thing in harsher alternative electronic music.
C-Drone-Defect opens the release with a creepy remix of the title track that builds up really well and makes for a haunting introduction. “Your Nightmare” is the first original Unter Null track and is basically a female version of the classic Suicide Commando track, “Hellraiser.” Next up is the brutal title track, which has Erica screaming “You Sick Fuck” into a heavily distorted microphone, which will surely turn a few heads at the next club night near you. Manufactura turns it all to noise and provides a filthy remix that reminds me of Combichrist. Implant provide a poor remix and I have heard better from them, such as a recent Agonize remix. Luckily, the Dutch EBM crew of Grendel provides a top quality remix as always. This makes me wonder why Erica did not sign to the Noitekk European label as this would be perfect for her sound and make her a part of that harsh electro/terror-EBM genre. The Tamtrum remix was rather refreshing and would do well with the DJs, whilst Everything Goes Cold, a side project from Psyclon Nine, provides a chilled remix of “Your Nightmare.”
Closing with her own sadist version of “Sick Fuck,” Erica goes totally brutal and it shows how much power she has. This is well captured in her promo photos that often feature her covered in blood, and live shows where she basically goes insane on the stage in an EBM rage. Her debut album, The Failure Epiphany is due out this year.