REVIEWS

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The Retrosic
Nightcrawler

Metropolis Records / Tribune Records

Posted: Friday, March 09, 2007
By: Damon Wilson

It stands to reason that Nightcrawler was one of ReGen Magazine's top picks for 2006 seeing as how The Retrosic have made quite an impression yet again. Seems every release finds The Retrosic growing not only in popularity but also in musical depth. On Nightcrawler, The Retrosic does what so many terror EBM bands approach but rarely achieve. That is, this album sounds like it could actually be the soundtrack for the brilliant world of your nightmares; all at once beautiful and dark, laden with frustration and, yes, anger.

Nightcrawler begins with the sounds of gun shoots and dialogue delivered by the "right hand of doom" himself, Hell Boy. Like the director of Hell Boy, Guillermo del Toro, The Retrosic are obviously conscious of much more than just the surface aspects of their craft. The attention to detail demonstrated on Nightcrawler all at once constructs and sustains an overall enthralling atmosphere. For example, on "Unleash Hell," the low growl every four measures (or four bars if you count that way) is used to a wonderfully eerie means. As well, "Revolution" has a movement and bounce that all great floor killers should possess. The varied crescendo affects fuel the forward movement and power of the song. While "Bloodsport" has received a lot of press, "Desperate Youth" should not be overshadowed by it. Though it does not containing the same textural richness via the Middle Eastern-influenced melody present in "Bloodsport," it does make ample use of not only heavy beat elements along with standard EBM fare, but adds the atmospheric beauty of strings to a gritty industrial commentary. Lastly among the other very notable tracks, "Silence" stands out as a point of interest. Unlike the majority of the songs on the album, which are dissonant to the ends of darkness, here Cyrus and company seem to lament.

Comparisons to other masterful EBM and heavy beat artists have been made and justly so. Fans of such music will undoubtedly enjoy Nightcrawler. However, on this album, The Retrosic have continued down the path of crafting a distinctive dreamscape all their own. The all-too-similar vocal distortion is a nonplus to the arrangements, but perhaps that is more due to their overall overuse by current electronic bands and less of a mark against this particular album. As well, the heavy use of strings may lead some to draw steampunk or so-called Victorian industrial comparisons. The overall sentiment of those styles is missing. No, Nightcrawler is simply an absorbing atmospheric terror EBM album by an artist that appears to use whatever orchestration needed to achieve the desired outcome.