Cold Meat Industry, 2005
Genre: ?
1. Season of Tears
2. How Hard
3. She's Dead
4. Ego
5. Insomnia
6. Divided
7. Obscura Lua
8. The Bar
9. Delhi
10.Rêve Éveillé
11. Silencio
Many people may find this a curious thing for me to review, since we are predominantly a metal webzine. However, I do seem to buy things at random and sometimes I come across something different without really knowing what it is to begin with. In the end it has come into my hands and I’m going to review it, whether it has a logical place or not. Mostly I review this in warning for those who read the description and become intrigued like I did.
As many know, I am a fan of Dark Wave and Ambient and Cold Meat Industry is a label that puts out fairly large amount of quality titles in this vein. However, there is the fringe element that fall under Goth or Industrial that pop up every now and again. Call it part of the marketing team at Cold Meat, but their descriptions of albums in terms of defining these genres is terrible sometimes. Often times their descriptions are quite vague and make it sound like it’s an enjoyable listen on a global scale; however, as every human being is different and enjoys different things, this is not the case. I know from a corporate perspective they wish it could be a universal thing, then again there would be no variation which is a self defeating purpose when it comes to the arts. Regardless ultimately the fact remains that I read the description of this, thought I would like it, put this on, and was gravely disappointed in it.
The album has an interesting opening and I was surprised to see there were a lot of lyrics on the album so I knew there would be a lot of singing. However, groups like Dark Sanctuary have lots of singing and lyrics and I love them, so that didn’t bother me at first glance. Some songs are sung, some are not. This is what did it in for me by the time I got to the second track. Their main vocalist has a very deep female voice, which adds a different element altogether to the music, so I found it more interesting than a turn off. However, come “How Hard” the music takes an intense shift and it is barely even sung and is more “talked” rather than fit into the music.
The end of the matter is that I had a similar experience with this as I did with Coph Nia’s “Shape Shifter.” The opening track was quite good on here and I did have some hope for the album. “Season of Tears” has an excellently dark melody that made it somewhat reminiscent of Autumn Tears, so I thought this would be an album I enjoyed. That perception was changed entirely with “How Hard.” It had this modern music aspect mixed with something akin to being Goth, I guess? I’m sorely out of my element in terms of describing what this actually is. However, it is not precisely what I expected to get and it’s surely not Ambient. The description I did read said it had elements of trip-hop, but elements to me means it is slight, however, it seems to be a dominating feature on this album. The album is clearly designed for this ethnic modern styled music, being somewhat overly “artistic” in its design. I would say Industrial is the dominant force here and reminds me a bit of something like Android Lust on some levels, only Olen’k is a bit better in my opinion. As it stands there were only two tracks I actually enjoyed on this release those being “Season of Tears” and “Delhi.” I found it hard to get into this album in the end; the bad parts far outweighing the good on this.
I suspect if you are a fan of groups like Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio or the Coph Nia album I referenced then this might be something you'll fancy. Either way, I was unable to get into this genre and I never have and I probably never will. I merely write this now to point out what this truly is and how it’s different rather than write a description designed to sell CD’s. So Ambient fans be ware this is not an Ambient album by any means, however, if you do enjoy Goth overtones, you may enjoy this release a bit.
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