Brainchild / Living Sacrifice / Circle of Dust
Metamorphosis
Reviewed by David Jenison
Though there are many bands which are incredible musically, not so many have the single, incredible, musical trait of being able to create energy and anger within a listener. As a musical style, industrial metal has had many of the most driving and anger-ridden groups, and with all respect to great industrial bands like Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, and Skinny Puppy, Scott Albert's, Metamorphosis, as a whole, generates more angry emotion than any other industrial band the present writer has ever heard or seen. Previous to being remixed, all the songs contained elements which create an aggressive response, but the restructuring of the songs with great new samples and extreme changes between hard and soft styles has risen the album to a new level of musical excellence. Brainchild's two remixes and two new songs undoubtedly represent the best material on the album. "Deviate" and "Descend" have been thoroughly remixed, making them both familiar and new simultaneously. One of the new songs, "Heldweller," has some death metal vocal production which adds variety yet still remains accessible for those not fond of the death metal genre. The Living Sacrifice remixes may find resistance from listeners, including myself, who are not into Living Sacrifice's new vocal direction, which one reader referred to in a letter as "a man with no tongue trying to cough up a hair ball." However, Living Sacrifice's excellent musicianship has been given a new twist as many of the beats and bass lines have been given a very different sound and structure. The song "Black Veil," which is the best of the Living Sacrifice remixes, features a catchy guitar riff from the song, "Will Call You With the Song Title Today," which is turned into a repeating musical loop with the addition of killer samples that include a very cool Gregorian chant. The Circle of Dust remixes likewise turned out phenomenal, but there are other songs which would have made better remixes, and there was really no need to remix "Consequence" twice. However, none of the Circle remixes match the new song, "Self-Inflict," which finds itself musically somewhere between Brainchild and Circle. Looking at the album as a whole, Scott Albert has proven that he is one of the industry's greatest musical minds. One wonders, though, what makes his music sound so angry, or what allows the music to move the listener more than the other industrial bands. One can only wonder if there is something in particular that makes Scott Albert so angry. Nevertheless, "METAMORPHOSIS" is not only the most authentic sounding album in the industry, it is the present writer's opinion that it is probably the very best.