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Album: "Retrospective"
(1999) |
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Reviewed by: Darklight This is a 14 song collection of X Marks The Pedwalk material spanning from 1988 to 1999. The amazing thing about this CD is that nothing sounds dated proving that this band was ahead of their time making some of the best EBM you could hear. What this band excels in is making very energetic electronic dance music that makes you want to get out on the dance floor and move to the rhythms and beats. Each and every track delivered here is good. There isn't one you will want to skip past. You can tell the difference between older and newer material here. The older tracks are a little more dark electro industrial with slight anger and aggression similar to that of LEAETHER STRIP. As they progress their sound takes on a cleaner more polised style of techno/EBM sound. Their most recent material is very uplifting techno/EBM/synth-pop hybrid music. The only thing I would do differently here is put the songs in a better order. While the order that they're in now is decent, I think the CD would have flowed a little better if various songs were placed in a different order. But other than that, I have no complaints with this CD.
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Album: "Drawback"
(1998) |
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Reviewed by: Darklight This album features songs that combine the elements of sci-fi electro industrial, techno and synth-pop all in one to create lighter, softer and more melodic moods with a slight dance edge. This is upbeat and uplifting music with a positive edge to it. It's very quality and well done with good production. The singing is shared by both an accented male and beautiful and soothing female. While everything is good here, I still have a few complaints. There are two instrumentals and two remixes. One of the instrumentals is used as an opening piece which is fine. The second instrumental is placed as track five and fits well there. It's good as well. The two remixes don't sound that much different from the original versions making them seem the same. If the remixes were saved as bonus tracks at the end of the album this would have been fine. However, they are not placed that far apart from each other. The last track on here is titled "Mix Marks The Pedwalk" and is a twelve minute long mixture of older XMTP material. This is actually my favorite track on the album. It's a shame that it's recorded at a lower volume level and sounds rather muffled when compared to the rest of the material delivered here. This takes away from it a bit. My disappointment with this album is that it only delivers seven new original songs with vocals. While these are all good, some are better than others. Some just seem too repetitive with the music never changing much and the vocals repeating the same lyrics over and over. The songs where they blend both male and female vocals together stand out the most. Too bad there aren't more of these here. The bottom line is that this is a good effort with some quality music to be enjoyed. However, I feel that it could have been a lot better.
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