Album: "Take" (1999)
Label: 12 Ton Productions
Style: Heavy industrial
Songs: 12

Reviewed by: Darklight

AnthroPile is the solo project of Bryan Tewell Hughes. He has managed to compile one of the freshest sounding industrial CDs I have heard in quite some time. The songs feature outstanding music. There's a lot happening in it, and it just sounds really cool. It's fast paced and energetic for the most part made up of electronics, synths, guitars and drum programming. It has an overall aggressive edge to it. If there were some serious and angry vocals to go with the music, these songs would be even better. However, this is where the CD falls short. While the music is top notch, Bryan's vocals just don't fit well. He has a somewhat high pitched voice and sings in a rather comical style. Mixing serious dark energetic aggressive guitar heavy industrial music with high pitched humorous vocals just doesn't work well in my opinion. Songs such as "The Civilized Man" and "Distributor" would have been so much better if the high pitched vocals were replaced with deep distorted growling. The unique thing that Bryan does do with a lot of the songs is use samples in place of vocals. The problem is that some of the songs use the samples too much. The tracks "My Shiny Toys", "But They Do", "Mesopotamia" and "Zero-Conscience Parasites" put the music in the back and the samples up front making them a bit annoying and repetitive. However, the tracks "Rabbit Cage" and "Monkeys" mix the music and samples just right to pull the concept off. The two instrumentals "PaM" and "Angels and Machines" are incredible. The music in these tracks is beautiful with light ambient type structures to them. The one song that stands out the most is "Ambulatory Meat Plants". It's more of a story with music than an actual song, but it's very original and quite funny. While I respect the originality and diversity of the CD, I still can't help but feel that a lot of the songs would have been better if serious dark and distorted vocals were used, and the samples were somewhat toned down. But this CD is still very interesting and entertaining as it is now. I recommend it to anyone looking for something different in industrial music.