With selections ranging back to 1999′s Fun with Knives album (skipping past the group’s first seven years of output), this ‘best of’ compilation features some of Velvet Acid Christ’s singles alongside new remixes and a few more recent/obscure picks. The group’s characteristic mix of EBM synths, dark beats, hissing vocal treatment, and handfuls of samples from films and video games fills the collection, and though it’s not quite a direct chronology, the track order does trace a general path from older to newer material, which helps highlight the shift in style from manically cartoonish energy to more reserved brooding.
As it covers almost two decades of the band’s history, it’s perhaps not the outright shifts in style which are notable as much as the refinement of retained qualities along the way. The drum machine percussion, for instance, is practically the same in terms of song-writing through the years, but the cleaning up of its sonics and lining against the other rhythms attains audible improvement, while the meshing of textures and improved balancing of the volume dynamics also stand out with their rising polish through the track-list. A little too broad in scope to give listeners a clear idea of VAC’s most common MO, but as a cross-cut of their more commercially successful years, it does its job well.
Scrambled Brains 