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Unter Null
Sacrament EP

Alfa Matrix

Posted: Friday, December 08, 2006
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

Unter Null is certainly an impressive force in today's hardcore electro, steadily pushing the boundaries of aggro-tech and terror EBM to create a sound that is not easily pigeonholed. As the project of Erica Dunham, her debut album, The Failure Epiphany already showed signs of her moving past the comparisons to a female-fronted Suicide Commando, and now with the release of the twin EPs, Sacrament and Absolution, she continues to redefine the sound of the underground. On the Sacrament EP, we have four new tracks coupled with four remixes. The first of the new tracks, "Prophecy" is especially notable for its creepy synth textures akin to dark ambient, along with its touches of slightly distorted breakbeats. Dunham's vocals take on an even more frightening dimension with the echoing vocals in the bridge, adding an even more horrific and tense air to an already delightfully demented track. "This is Your End" takes on a slightly more mournful tone with its morose arpeggios offset by a high energy dance beat, while T3chn0ph0b1a's remix speeds things up, transforming it into something closer to danceable goth rock. "Watch You Die" is a slower track with even more industrial leanings with some light piano accompaniment; not dissimilar to later Front Line Assembly. Once again, Dunham employs some phased out echoing vocals to add an ethereal quality in the tail end of the track. Inure's remix of "Endtime" is wrought with twinkling synth arpeggios that will surely send your head spinning as you're on the dance floor, while Blank add their recognizably cheesy futurepop styling to "Prophecy," transforming the horror of the original into a dark high-speed dance track. As the first of the twin EPs, Sacrament does its part to showcase Dunham's increasing sense of experimenting with the conventions of the terror EBM and hard electro scene, while still keeping those qualities that will keep people coming back for more: aggressive synthesizers combined with stomping percussion. It's not groundbreaking, but it is an exciting set of songs that will get surely get stuck in your head for quite awhile.