If you would like to introduce your music project effective to an international based audience, you have to invest more than ever before in promotional efforts to succeed. That means, there has to be more than the usual coarse of action like the usage of multiple accounts at those important communities like MySpace, Vampirefreaks, or at Facebook.
I like to describe those minor matters, because the release of the second album 'State Of Mind' of the Dutch-based trio XMH is a remarkable example, if multiple possible promotion channels got activated.
First, this album got released by the German label Danse Macabre Records around May 2010. The being of Benjamin Samson (vocals, programming), Isa Garcia (vocals, keyboards), and Pieter Sperling (keyboards, programming) at this renowned label offers the quite important fact, to get European distribution via Alive. To double this feature and to undersign the hope into the abilities of this act, this album got picked up by the newly installed German DJ- promotion agency M2C, which consists of Bruno Kramm (DAS ICH/Danse Macabre Records) and the female Hardbeat promotion-queen Jessica Schellberg. In short: this assures intense club play for XMH in Europe. And to match all of this: the US-label Nilaihah Records has worked out a license deal and takes care to service the North-American market. Asides the expected promotional onslaught to service all relevant North-American-based DJ's, magazines and online resources, this album at least should be available at every retailer like Metropolis, COP International, CDBaby, or Storming The Base for Canada. To sum that up, there are a lot of promotional activities and hopes of the responsible people behind this Dutch music project, which could help them to reach a lot of higher steps. Musically I don't have too much doubts, that this project won't reach a higher step in their career, as they are able to impress with some clever arranged synth loops and some programmed delicacies. They are talented in their kind and offer maybe one of the best works released during the last three months ' but what kind of music are they providing?
It is globally that kind of Harsh EBM/Dark Electro, which falls under that ugly moniker Hellectro. And seriously, I am disappointed in those parts, where XMH try too obviously to copy elements and synth arrangements, which have been discovered by thousands of other band projects during the last 6 years before ('Dictate', or the usage of dumb voice samples like in 'Komasaufen'). Massive DJ inserts may means to walk a relatively compatible path compared to the up and rising projects of the scene like SUICIDE COMMANDO, X-FUSION, or related. But XMH prove with some of their pearls available on here too ('Neon Venus', featuring Isa Garcia providing the lead vocals), that they are capable to offer a wider musically spectrum, than the usual repetitive stuff (check also out the accompanying guitar riffs in 'State Of Mind', or 'Tears In Rain').
A good and quality Harsh Electro album for sure, but with some tendencies to repeat some phrases, but after only a second full-length album, the complete sound dimension and abilities could be normally seldom pointed out. A Dutch band project, which still hasn't reached the end of the rope.