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Album: "Language
Of Silence" (1998) |
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Reviewed by: Darklight While this is a new Numb release, it sounds dated. There is nothing new delivered here. These songs basically sound like Front Line Assembly, lacking the creativity and originality of FLA. The tracks delivered here with vocals are dark, angry and aggressive with frantic electronic programming and noises mixed with sampled guitar and hard driving drum beats. The vocals are angry shouting that basically just yell over the music. These songs don't sound a lot different from each other. They are rather straight forward and never get too interesting. But I do like them for the most part because they are packed full of energy. They do rock. But the band likes to go in different directions adding extremely ambient pieces in-between most of the songs. These are completely out of place. They slow down the pace and basically ruin the flow from start to finish. I like bands to include changes and variety in their music, but I prefer it to be done in the songs themselves. Mixing heavy and aggressive industrial songs with experimental ambient tracks just doesn't work. The two do not go together at all. I hope that Numb concentrate on making more creative tracks with vocals, and less ambient intrumentals on their next release.
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Album: "Suspended"
(1999) |
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Reviewed by: Nicholas This single is intended to be a first taste of the new album "Languange of Silence" by Vancouver's Numb. If the single is any indication, the new album will follow along in the same musical style of Blood Meridian, even retaining the same vocalist. The Primary Inversion mix, presumably most like the album version, begins with ambient drones but within seconds the softness is obliterated by a steady, repetitive beat and splintered 303 sounds. It is repetitive in the sense that the music barely changes whenever the traditional shouted vocals go to the chorus of the song. There is some interesting experimentation with the song in the middle when exciting new sounds are brought in, but then it returns for another verse and chorus only to end anticlimactically. The song is still very enjoyable, but the talent for creating some great sounds that Don Gordon demonstrates in his noisier excursions during songs is not done any justice by his songwriting skills or by a shouting vocalist beckoning us to return to an older approach to electro. While it is better than most electro yet released, there is nothing here that cannot be heard on a FLA release with better vocals and song structures. The distorted Logic remix by Numb makes a purchase of this single worthwhile, since it features better rhythms. It is an instrumental that shifts between throbbing noise and subtler drones and drum clicks. The ElektroniKaka has an acid house feel to it, which is not surprising since Bobby Shea was a remixer on it. The last Numb remix, the Fractured remix, is not worthy of being on this release, one reason being the coupling of drones and shouted "suspended!" vocals from David Collings. A dubby bass drone and some simple drum and bass bits are used sparingly, and the vocals simply overpower the music and seem absurd. Brief guitar bursts, plinking piano keys, screeching noises and repeated "addicted!" vocal samples are all used, presumably, to annoy this reviewer. The final Axiom mix is done by Hiwatt Marshall, and he lives up to his reputation of being a brilliant producer as he fine tunes the track into an actual song rather than just two verses slapped together with a noise solo in between. All in all this is a nice release with good music but the vocals have got to go. For the musically cultured: The rhythm for Primary Inverson is the same as Spahn Ranch's "Heretic's Fork", and the screeching noises in the Fractured mix are as annoying as those on Meat Beat Manifesto's Armed Audio Warfare album. As for sounding like a lesser FLA, the Axiom mix even has some blips in it reminiscent of "Virus".
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Album: "Blood
Meridian" (1997) |
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Reviewed by: Darklight Psychotic energy packed noise filled aggressive techno style music starts this album off right away pulling you in and making you want to hear what comes next. Then dark deep slightly distorted growling vocals come in and overlay the music in an evil style. Before long the singing turns into shouting. It's so alive and emotion filled that you just can't sit still. You will be looking for the nearest mosh pit to let out all of your pent up rage. Song two "Dirt" follows with the same heavy aggression, but isn't quite as interesting. It's good, but a little too repetitive and straight forward. Song three "Blood Meridian" is a dark ambient noise sample littered instrumental that I find to be rather slow moving and drab. Song four "Stalker" mixes electronics with noise. The singing is done in a slight hip-hop style that reminded me of the vocals used in Swamp Terrorists songs. This track is heavy and dreary. It moves at a medium pace and has almost a metal feel to it even though it lacks guitars. Song five "Desire" begins dark and almost gothic. Before long it becomes fast paced with malfunctioning electronics and growling shouting pissed off vocals. It also sounds like an industrial metal song that lacks the use of guitars. Song six "Critical Mass" is a noisy techno instrumental that is repetitive. Song seven "No Time" is without a doubt the best song to be found here. It's dark, angry and aggressive with a lot of different sounds layered into it. The singing is less distorted and sings as well as shouts. This track is just energy packed and makes you want to smash things. Song eight "Alien Hand" is an extremely slow boring ambient instrumental that is out of place on this album. Song nine "Deserted" sounds exactly like Front Line Assembly to me. It's dark and medium paced with whispering evil vocals overlayed on top of repetitive electronic music. Song ten "Spasm" is a short ambient instrumental that should not be here. This overall release is a slight disappointment in my opinion. It's rather dull, drab and boring without anything really new or creative to make it stand out. The music and vocals sound the same on almost every track and there are too many instrumentals that are out of place here. This album just really didn't do much for me. I hope that their next release is better.
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Album: "Wasted
Sky" (1994) |
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Reviewed by: Darklight This album features songs that are very heavy, aggressive, electronic, and guitar driven with distorted vocals. There are nine songs, two of which are instrumentals, and one that is extremely mellow and slow paced. That means there are only six hard-core songs found here. That's a shame, because these are good songs. I want more of them. They do sound fairly similar to each other, and don't include a lot of diversity. But they are still solid and well structured songs that are very fast paced and energetic.
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