Urban Awakening

Caution, contains guitars. And lots of them. The vibe here is firmly the dirty industrial end of things, and while there’s one or two good moments, a lot of this is sheer unlistenable dross. THD kick off with Bond, a frenetic pounder with plenty of dark energy despite lo-fi production, which unfortunately descends into mess with a clunky, addled guitar line thrashing about like a beached sealion. It’s a mess. The presence of Wizzy Noise is almost always a good thing, and Mind Bending is a nice little surprise. It’s more in keeping with their older, circa-Cyclotron stuff with moody drones in the background, and it escalates perfectly via circa-Elektro-Theatre-Wizzy into circa-Sabotage-Wizzy. Not a classic Wizzy track but worth a sniff. Tim Schuldt’s Stroke has got energy, despite relying almost solely on a chunky guitar that I would rather wasn’t there. There’s some nice tricks here but somehow the production seems a little 2D to me. Star X & DJ Feio’s The Trap has a hefty-industrial acidic edge that you wouldn’t expect from anything with Star X’s name on it. It’s the only decent tune on here: it escalates well to a nice peak, has a beefy breakdown, then goes headlong into a cracking final run, with a sort of buzzcut highend sound dipping up and down as it goes. Dark Soho’s Fairy Tales is a Konami-tastic bit of guitar-led videogame music and is a far, far cry from their high-watermark excitement of a few years ago. WTF, as people say on the internet. Mino’s Tripology starts out nice and edgy, gets wrecked by a Matrix sample, then goes into this sort of euphoric final section that sounds like stuttered, throwaway fullon with cringeworthy melodies; and even D-Tek, who in the eyes of the general consensus never does an awful lot wrong, seems to have produced something under-nourished with Reeboot. Trance by numbers, there’s no soul here and it seems to just be plodding through the motions. 4CN’s Slt is another puzzling one, it starts out fine but then it’s completely predictable fullon fodder – sounding a little like it was written three years ago. All of which together does nothing to prepare you for Xenomorph’s Controlled Freedom – its awash with stinking guitars, it’s fetish metal, music for fifteen-year-olds wearing black lipstick to stab themselves to in the dark. Seriously. Maybe I’m out of touch and square, which I severely fucking doubt, but this is pure, unadulterated monkeytoss in a jar. THD’s Desperado Urbano closes the compilation and not a moment too soon, it’s got a tuff industrial backbone and a four-note cheesy topend riff, and it doesn’t work at all. Right. I appreciate that not every compilation can be a good one, I even appreciate that a lot of compilations will be more-or-less mediocre. But in five years of reviewing music I have never encountered a CD where, after listening to it, I feel as though I’m owed back 74 minutes of my life. Next.