'Nichts wÄhrt ewig' ('Nothing Lasts Forever') is the second album from MARTINÉ (yeah, the name is supposed to be all caps; I checked multiple places) located in Aachen, Germany, offering a versatile mix of 13 tracks exploring the genres of EBM, industrial, synthpop, experimental, and ambient. This double album features the main songs on CD 1 (Alpha) and the remixed on CD2 (Omega), so the bang-for-the-buck on this release is impressive. The Alpha CD is 13 tracks in 73 minutes while the Omega CD is 9 tracks in 47 minutes remixing 5 tracks from the main CD, some of them obviously multiple times. (We'll get to the remix later.)

From the get-go on "Phalanx" I'm hearing some welcome old school style EBM. As much as my musical tastes have changed over the years I still love this stuff, especially when done well, which this certainly is. Echozone tells me that track 2- "Macht der Stimme," recently climbed to the top spot on the German Alternative Charts, along with the freshly released single "Ein Sturm zieht auf" (track #8). While the music has a comfortable familiarity I kept thinking, just who does MARTINÉ remind me of? (There have been so many over the years.) Then it hit me several songs into the album - X MARKS THE PEDWALK! (That would be their earlier work, pre-Estefania in the vocal department.) Vocally, Martiné sounds a lot like Sevren Ni-arb which is a good thing in my book. Language-wise the songs seem to be nearly evenly divided between German and English, another positive aspect. Of course, lyrics are typically dystopian, melancholy and bleak, but happy dark electro is kind of a contradiction. While some songs are relatively simple ("Phalanx", "Macht der Stimme", "Ein Sturm zeiht auf") a good number of others offer some complexity. This provides a really cool mix of motifs to change things up, somewhat essential when you're relying on 16th note sequencing to carry most of the musical burden. Dialogue samples are kept to an absolute minimum, a very good thing in my opinion, often overused in EBM. The album almost dips in intensity in the middle, but pulls off a remarkable recovery in the last phase. This is achieved by an artist who really knows what he's doing regarding album flow, as "Wipeout" (nothing to do with the Surfaris and "surf rock") rebuilds momentum and interest. The final track on the first CD, "Stuka", is not an ode to the infamous Junkers Ju 87 dive bomber used by the Luftwaffe in World War II, but an anti-war mini epic that could easily apply to Russian and Ukrainian soldiers giving their lives in a futile conflict. (Don't get me started on that one.)

As for the remix CD (Omega), it offers remixes of "Black Noir," "Seraph," "A Final Note," "My Saviour," and "Wipeout" by Mach Fox (Zwarmachine), Das Fortleben, Empathia Poetica, Hexify, Insect Plasma, MissSuicide, Synaptic Defect (that would be my friend and Chain D.L.K. writer Marc Tater) and Phobos Reactor. Normally I don't much care for remixes, unless they offer something above and beyond the original track. Used to be remixes were mainly for club djs, but not anymore. I have to say these remixes offer a somewhat different take on the originals but not so radically. (I noticed the FLA influence in Synaptic Defect's remix of "My Saviour".) I think that including the remix album with the main album is a good strategic marketing move. Rarely do remix albums sell as well as the original album unless the remixers are super high profile. Even then, it can be iffy. So the bottom line is, a strong buy. This is very good stuff with as much high caliber musical variety as this dark electro project can possibly muster.