Belgian musician Pierre Remy is active as Fractional and his latest album COME MIERDA ("Like shit") is going to be released at the end of the month by Brume Records. Fractional creates great sound sculptures where ambient, dub, break beat and industrial music is blend into a cinematic mixture that works really great. Listening to tracks like "Sibi" makes you dive into a different world and if you close your eyes you'll realize that it isn't a really comfortable one. Tension, a bit of sadness, melancholy and rage are the feelings expressed by Pierre's music and if you check the Antonin de Bemels ''Misute'' video, (you can find it into the CDrom partition of the CD) you'll check yourself what I mean. We have faceless guys walking down the streets. The main character (when the break beat part is on) turns into what it seems to be a Tibetan demon (or it is an oni) with a great visual effect (his hair spread and twist). Great sound and atmosphere...

Next time I go to SxSW I'll be looking for the name Lucid Dementia, an Austin-based industrial-rock band inspired by KMFDM, NIN, Skinny Puppy, Marylin Manson, Gwar and the like, with a political agenda and an often spoken about live show that allegedly looks like the Muppet Show meets Iron Maiden's "Eddie" meets the Saw mask kind of thing (it involves a 6-foot tall singing puppet and is pretty theatrical and hard to describe, which is why I want to go check them out if they play in their native "weird" city).
As you might imagine from the above impressive list of influences, we're dealing with lots of guitars, samples, treated vocals, sequences and machine sounding drums (although they are supposed to have a drummer). The band is female-fronted but at times I could swear I was hearing a choir of children, which makes it oh so creepier I guess.
The musical complexity (flutes, asian instrument samples, harp etc) of their composition is ambitious and worthy of notice, the delivery might not as sonically dynamic and powerful as they maybe would like it to be, but nevertheless the intentions and ideas are there, but that might very well be a limitation of the genre.
Overall a well thought out album that speaks to their skills and dedication.

Great record. For those who are not familiar with Puscifer, that would be another pseudonym for Tool/A Perfect Circle singer Maynard James Keenan's solo endeavors. He first released the debut album "V is for Vagina" and now present us with its deconstructed and reinterpreted remix album version called "V is for Viagra". Maynard's voice is immediately recognizable and unavoidably marks this record with that aura of mysteriousness and coolness that surrounds his two main projects. But even if you are not a Tool/APC fan, this record has legs of its own and it stands tall against what's out there in this niche genre. There are no rock guitars and Maynard barely ever sings. All the vocals are either recited in a grandiose and powerfully enunciated way (almost Laibach-style) or spoken and distorted like many electronic bands do, or just simply heavily treated, cut up and staggering. The music is electronic in almost its entirety but still sounds very organic, dynamic and exciting, ranging from minimal and dark to climatic and chaotic. Remixes by Josh Eustis (Telefon Televiv), Lustmord, Dave "Rave" Ogilvie and Colin Janz, Danny Lohner of NIN/Renholder, Mat Mitchell and Contradictator (QOTSA, APC), Joey Jordison (Slipknot), Paul Barker (Ministry, USSA), Aaron Turner (ISIS), Richard Devine, Michale Patterson and 8MM insure freshness of approach and style and a true and established connection with the electronic world that we support and represent. Highly recommended.

Reissued in a luxury 16 pages high quality digi-book, with 2 bonus tracks "Tema del destino" and "Mabuse MK.I", "Kampf" is finally back available. Tronus Abyss history has started in the '94 as an active part of the Black Metal scene but lately become something out of any easy classification. Being praised by the underground scene for their two previous releases containing a blend of medieval sounds mixed with Black Metal, the Italian trio developed their music and pushed it towards more electronic- and ambient-oriented territories. They’ve always been considered a serious, cult band in the so-called extreme scene. The members have always been seriously involved in esoteric and cultural background activities, sometimes disturbing to the most due to their flirting with extreme traditional right-wing topics (not political, but mostly related with Traditional esoteric philosophies and philosophers - Evola, Guénon, Codreanu, etc.) in lyrics and aesthetics. Musically, after four years from the release date, is still personal and innovative, not only black metal but also electro-folk, ambient and industrial moods, crossing the border of a genre. Bombastic sounds are being blended together with dark electronic, distorted and acoustic guitar, whispering/spoken word, and gothic sounds. The first two songs 'Kampf' and 'Mabuse' give a good presentation of the atmosphere throughout the album; dark, depressive, and most of the time threatening. The third song, "L’eredità del cinghiale" is again very folk & medieval sounding with epic spoken vocals and some grand keyboards. The fourth song, "Funeral" is where things start to get very odd. This is more of a dark ambient/electronic song with peculiarly spoken robotic like vocals. From here on we keep seeing the band exploring and incorporating these various influences into the rest of the songs. The tracks 'Sth.492', and 'Epilogo' make a welcome distraction from the harshness throughout this album and can be regarded as distorted piano/organ pieces. Later on the track list there’s a fragment which seems to be an excerpt from some sort of propaganda film. In addition to this I can’t forget mentioning the track number 9 which has already earlier appeared on a compilation dedicated to Burzum. This song is called "Moti Ragnarokum" and was originally performed by Varg Vikernes on "Daudi Baldrs" album.
Additional compliments for the artwork of the digi-pack which displays fitting images with the coldness presented on this album.

Skitliv is a project created by ex Mayhem's member Maniac. Helped by different people on drums and bass plus Attila (member of Sunn O))) and Mayhem) and Kvarforth (from Shining), he recorded ANFETAMIN, the first official Skitliv album. ANFETAMIN isn't properly their debut studio album because it contains two tracks recorded in studio (the main title plus a different version of "Slow pain coming", a track you could previously find on their demos) plus six others recorded live at Camden Underworld the 13th December 2007. At a first listening you could questioning yourself: "why Justin isn't releasing this one on his black metal sub label Satanax Rex?". Well, after a couple of spins the answer I gave to myself is: "this CD has been pressed on Cold Spring because of the its attitude". You know, Skitliv's music for sure is derivative from metal and doom and Mayhem years for sure left a trace on Maniac's musical attitude. The difference on tracks like "Amfetamin" and on "Slow pain coming" is made by how the guitars are treated. Vocals, rhythms and the general atmosphere find its root on doom metal but noise doesn't. "Amfetamin" has no drums and into its eight minutes length we have guitar arpeggios duetting with desperate vocals while treated noisy guitars build a tense background. Also for "Slow pain coming" it's the same: it has doom rhythms and crying vocal parts but on the background we always have a web of noise that change the overall atmosphere. It's also interesting to notice David Tibet's participation (with Andrew Liles) on the live intro "Who will deliver us from gold & planets?" where he perform one of his vocal multi layered laments just like on the early Current 93 days.