Review: Billy Idol – Devil’s Playground

Review: Billy Idol – Devil’s Playground
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Billy Idol Devil’s Playground Sanctuary Having placed himself in a self-imposed exile, the majority of the last decade was decidedly Idol-less. Billy was off losing himself in cyberpunk culture (rather prophetic, considering The Matrix was far from view) and the excesses that defined him as one of the 80s most reckless superstars. Then there was

Review: Erasure – Nightbird

Review: Erasure – Nightbird
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Erasure Nightbird Mute   On Erasure’s last release, Other People’s Songs, Vince Clark and Andy Bell sounded tired. Their bag of tricks had been spent, reducing them to an album of poorly constructed cover songs, and even though it pushed the duo back onto the radar in America, it was quite easily their worst effort

Review: Rosetta Stone – Adrenaline Deluxe

Review: Rosetta Stone – Adrenaline Deluxe
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Rosetta Stone Adrenaline Deluxe Cleopatra In the late 80s, goth had become a bombastic beast that for better or worse was bent on imploding. It had grown from the small seedy clubs of London into the ugly stepchild the UK press tried to edit out of the family photos. No surprise then, that by the

Review: Lost Soul – Chaostream

Review: Lost Soul – Chaostream
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Lost Soul Chaostream Earache Records   By the horns of Satan, I had to listen to this album twice just to make sure it was as insanely kick ass as I first thought it was! INDEED it was! When you hear Lost Soul, you will KNOW that you have been brutalized and punished to the

Review: Bloodbath – Nightmares Made Flesh

Review: Bloodbath – Nightmares Made Flesh
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Bloodbath Nightmares Made Flesh Century Media Records   Sweden is home to a lot of totally shitty bands these days. Bloodbath is not one of them. This band has actually existed for almost six years now. Don’t let the founding members’ more accessible full-time gigs (Edge of Sanity, Opeth) fool you—Bloodbath is a serious nod

Review: Impaled – Death After Life

Review: Impaled – Death After Life
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Impaled Death After Life Century Media Records   As I scraped shredded meat off of the scalpels and saws on my block, I noticed the pus oozing from the new Impaled disc. Pathological waste in the form of oozing riffage at once encrusted my eardrums. It was at this point that I deduced the flesh-shredding

Review: Winterkälte – Disturbance

Review: Winterkälte – Disturbance
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Winterkälte Disturbance Hands Production Winterkälte is one of the original rhythm noise acts that is still producing the finest in grating beats. Scratchy distortion and static screeching runs rampant on the 10 tracks of the German duo’s third full-length release. “Solar Peace,” “Eco Lateral Damage” and “Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons” indicate an environmentally charged political

Review: Violent Entity – Mechanized Division

Review: Violent Entity – Mechanized Division
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Violent Entity Mechanized Division Black Rain The coolest things about Violent Entity is how he manages to pull out original old-school industrial without sounding dated or dull. As the only U.S. artist on the Black Rain label, Damon Dullinger had his work cut out for him to match the quality of labelmates Davantage and Feindflug.

Review: Mad EP – When I’m 6

Review: Mad EP – When I’m 6
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Mad EP When I’m 6 Ad Noiseam The Ad Noiseam label is doing what other labels haven’t dared. Switching up typical IDM, noise, experimental, electronics and hip-hop while bridging a variety of genres and doing a phenomenal job with artists like Mad EP gives the label the leading edge on dull music trends. Mad EP

Review: Venetian Snares – Infolepsy EP

Review: Venetian Snares – Infolepsy EP
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Venetian Snares Infolepsy EP Coredump Records The Salt Lake label showcases more tasty treats with Venetian Snares’ latest, Infolepsy. Many of you are going to remember the famous pinball machine song on Sesame Street about the number “12.” Well, Mr. Funk has his own version of “Twelve” that takes your innocent childhood memories into a