In the only track of this single, Corroded Master meshes industrial beats and hissing vocals with glimmering synth loops and bass drones. Though it’s an odd mix, it works well enough, and the repetitive nature of the lyrics gets obscured enough by the instrumentation to make it through to the end without becoming too obnoxious.
Bagging up some unreleased tunes, this compilation offers up EBM with a stiffly industrial edge to its rhythms and synth voices. Steady beat-loops with hi-hat samples and ‘oontz oontz oontz’ drum machine compression (plus a few requisite drops of the Amen Break) mark every song, most of which come off as practice runs for more fully-realized tracks. The big exception is “The Invasion”, the ~7-minute closer, which unloads one percussion attack after another, rolling smoothly from one 4/4 to the next, packing in additional beat layers over each other, and escalating a background howl while doing so. That last track is enough to make the EP worth picking up on its own, though the rest remains kind of dicey.
The three minutes of this one-song single pass in a blend of synthpop instrumentals and black metal-styled vocals, burbling along on arpeggios while growling underneath. Experimental and non-disappointing, but still a little underwhelming due to the plasticky after-impressions.
Opening with its title track, this EP jumps into 4/4 beats, gleaming synth tones, and harsh, electronically-processed vocals rasping out fairly goofy lyrics about dehumanization. The following songs, with martial/mechanical names like “A Show of Force” and “The Abyssal Machine”, follow similar formulations, with the vocals (which appear more often than not in a dreamy, almost Cure-like moan) receiving the widest degrees of variation. Though there’s good work put into the texturing, channel separation, and other production, the songs never really feel like much more than exercises in assembly, with little emotional or rhythmic pull to their loop arrangements (the dip into techno-metal with “The Abyssal Machine” being practically the only exception). Technically respectable, but unmemorable.
In this one-track single, Corroded Master pulls together a faintly J-core-flavored beat with lots of fills while guest vocalist Baby Tap delivers an awkward near-rap. The instrumental side is decent enough, with nice work put into filling the numerous beat-gaps with ever-smaller percussive events, and some gliding synth to glaze over the hits, but it’s not quite enough to push the vocals into subconscious territory, where they’d better serve the track by hiding their lackluster lyrics as just another rhythm. A good sign of CM expanding his style coverage, but not that interesting when taken on its own.
Before moving into four tracks by Corroded Master, this EP opens with a remix of nullse†‘s “Hope for the Future”, featuring various treated bell-loops and flute-like synth glidings, with low-mixed beats providing a motorized texture beneath the glossier ringings. “Unsavedd” picks up from there, shifting into heavier tones and steadier percussive rhythms while alternating between new-wave plaintiveness and death metal growls on the vocals, a jump that squarely sections off the remix leader from the rest.
Two alternate mixes
(of “Righteous War”, with monastic chanting under 4/4 beats before jumping to raspy recitation, and “Pull”, with skittery, glinting synths accompanying muted yells)
follow, before finishing out with “Blood of the Fallen”, with bouncier beats and drag-drills joining retro house rhythms and forlorn singing. A weird mix taken together, but one with a fair number of enjoyable moments.
Packing four mixes of the title track, plus two for “Light”, this single leads with the base mix of “Bodycount”, a standard 4/4 electro-industrial stomper, with bit-crushed synths and compressed, hissing vocals livening up the hi-hat and bass kick staples. Aside from dragging things out to five minutes and change, it’s not too bad, but that’s about twice as long as it needs to effectively communicate its ideas. “Bodycount (Traumatize remix)” follows, playing up the synths and down-mixing the percussion to put a more dance-friendly twist on the steady pulses; “Bodycount (Count Gets Higher mix by Tactical Module)” brings a harder kick and shriller key squeals into play while shuffling up the rhythms; and “Bodycount V2″ stirs up more fluttery synth touches while bringing the vocals to higher clarity.
On the “Light” side, the original mix of that song moves to a slower pace, rolling along on slow kick-claps and protracted metallic scrapes, while the vocals indistinctly burble and echo, and “Light (Core Red Core remix)” swings the synth sweeps a bit wider, but otherwise stays pretty much the same. Decent material, but nothing outstanding.
Hard EBM and electro-industrial trappings mark the six songs of this EP, with raspy grunts, hissing growls, steady hi-hat beats, chopped and repeated vocal samples, and layers of compressed keyboard waves hitting 4/4 base-lines. Half of the tracks are remixes (two of them targeting the same song), which introduces a little variety to the proceedings, some of the breaks go off in interesting directions, and the rhythms are usually pretty good at keeping momentum rolling through the changes, but in the end (outside of the draggy malfunction groove of “Bodycount (Acid Trash remix)”), there’s just not a lot to help it stand out from the masses of similar industrial-tinged EBM.
Scrambled Brains 