The Roman duo Alien Vampires made up of the showy characters of NightStalker (... and his gun-like electro-industrial shots of acid samples)and Nisrok Infernalien (... and his viscous sticky vocal emissions... who’s that bastard surgeon who transplanted to him a pharynx from a rabid cat suffering from adenoids? ) came back with another coarse intercourse entitled Fuck Off And Die, a storm of ebm and techno movements full of scrap iron-like sounds, interferences, dis/torsions and boomy 4/4 rhythmical patterns , which are an effective remedy for mummified dancers although it is quite uncouth and totally rough (... I’m getting allergic to synth-brass sessions inherited by some Italian hit-house... I’ve sneezed on the screen while listening to tracks like Far From Shadows even if it is co-signed by the Suicide Commando mastermind Johan V.R., which isn’t a greenhorn of this kind of records and brings his tribute to the microphones). We have to admit that Alien Vampires’ guys have hugely improved their formula if compared with their past productions even if there’s a substantial lack of refined tracks and it seems they’re just winking at ferocious and angry dancefloors (... maybe a choice partially justified by marketing considerations as most of their fans in Rome have been collected among disco clubs such as Alien or famous fetish parties such as Ritual from their very first steps in the scene... ) without any real innovation except of some tracks such as "The Convent Burns" or "Resistance Ain’t Futile" with a more darkish appeal and frightening atmospheres than just an obvious melting pot of harsh beats, hard rhythms, female whimpering and blasphemous lyrics. There’s a slight evolution towards better directions if you consider the fact that most of Alien Vampires’ notoriety was also built on cover artworks for collectors, satanic adepts and fetishists (one of the most funny as well as blaspheme one was that of Nuns Are Pregnant... ). The one they choose for Fuck Off And Die is even more elegant than the previous ones, maybe as even AV are conscious of the undeniable fact that their sound got more refined than before!!! Some choices (including a graphical format between splatter and sadistic-pornographic references including the one of involving Laura Panerai, a fetish Italian porno star which recently decided to sell even used underwear and pubis hair, for some snapshots on the booklet... ) seems to be excessively stretching yet to persuade people having a refined "musical" palate to buy their record, but we could reasonably argue that this record will have a great success among aliens, vampires and above all people boasting of both of these qualifications! A part of Johan V.R., we have to mention the presence of some other famous collaborators such as Jouni from In Slaughter Natives (... leaving his mark on the obscure march introducing this record... ) and Noisuf-X (the technoid manifestation of Jan Lehmkamper aka X-Fusion, treating the title-track adding some ingredients from breakcore style).

If youâ??re not totally unaware of the German Gothic-folk and Medieval scene, itâ??s possible you already heard something about Violet â?“ or maybe you were lucky enough and see them perform on the same stage with renowned acts such as Corvus Corax, Faun, Saltatio Mortis or Persephone... - as well as their side project Violetta, one of the most intriguing medieval music project from the German fertile ground, which gained a considerable acclaim among people addicted to that enchanted imagination crowded with princesses, knights and sometimes dragons, witches and necromancers and perceives as still anchored to forgotten habits and values clashing with modern times! If you already follow this band, you probably know that just one year ago they composed a sort of soundtrack for The Book Of Eden, the best selling book of the fantasy German novelist Kai Meyer... Well, that book begun as a sort of spiritual journey of a group of heroes starting from the Parisian Tour Eiffel - a steel giant which could be considered as one of the most emblematic symbol of the modernity â?“ and going towards orient. It seems that for Modern Life, the same heroes come back to the modernity to fight against the false gods and believing of Modern Life. Such an interpretation could be easily verified since the beginning of the record: while Exult is a sort of ironic statement dealing with the misunderstanding of the concept of self-fulfillment â?“ often confused with ephemeral material wellness... - with an apex reached in the final strophe ("they say itâ??s healthy to be just a little selfish/to be a liar and a bitch sometimes/they say itâ??s fine to be a little egocentric/just in case it suits you well"), Modern Life is the introduction to the other side of the so-called modernity, speaking about the sense of denying and annihilation of personal identity and the need to emerge of people laying like numbered balls in a ballot box hidden into an anonymous crowd. The first part of this record winking at rock-orientated dynamics end up with Home, which seems to be the page of an intimate diary inviting the listener to find home inside itself while walking on the endless path of life. Thereâ??s a touching cover of Wreath Of Barbs â?“ famous and lovely piece by the legendary Bavarian dj Rudy Ratzinger (just to dispel any doubt, heâ??s not related to the Pope... as a body of evidence we could cite of the highest point of the insensively spiritual lyrics of this song sentencing "the injection religion/has a comalike effect/and bodies lay in decay/dreaming of a greener day"!)- with a goth-folk flow and a distinguishable oriental fragrance. Youâ??ll probably stand on ceremony after having a listen to a musical version of the Ode to Francisco Salinas, originally written by Fray Luis de Leon for this revolutionary musical theorist and organist, blind from birth (sometimes itâ??s not a limit... ), who starting from the theories by the Franciscan monk Gioseffo Zarlino about music in High Renaissance (the "ars perfecta" in its own words!) elaborated some interesting theories frequently applied in modern music about harmony and rhythm, intuitions which according to the literary tenor of this ode are compared to the vision of high spheres ("alta esfera"), even if his scores have been lost and no one knows anything about his compositions for organ; the combo has chosen an elegant texture of dubby rhythms mixed to latin and celtic sounds with an oriental touch, a pot-pourri highlighting the intent of this exquisite combo to go over the stylistic boundaries. Oda a Francisco Salinas is not the only song entirely sung in Spanish, being the other one a foggy habanera interpretation of the famous caricature-like poem Poderoso Caballero by Francisco de Quevedo (words such as "poderoso caballero es don dinero" â?“ "brave knight is mister money... !- reminded to us the El Pais reportage on Italian prime minister, the cavalier Berlusconi... .!!!), a poet, politician and nobleman who was endured by political persecutions for its frequent attacks on avidity and vices of the Spanish political establishment. The nice male/female vocal duet in White and the easy chords of the ballad Read My Lips are the more poppy acts of the whole album, while the formula mixing Celtic suggestions and athe brightening pop-rock melodic ballad in The Web could be perfect if Equinoxe will decide to issue a single from this album. Cembalo, guitar and bagpipe together with the mournful sing of Bianca Stücker in the melancholic vibes of I Wonder Why and the ritual appeal of Come Closer To The Fire close an album persuading us of the musical skills of this six musicians combo and even if they prefer to call their style "Medieval Crossover", they demonstrate their ability in drifting different style in their boiling pot. Hope to see them perform somewhere during the forthcoming summer as their live-shows are often enhanced by entrancing oriental dance elements and theatrical ones.

Once upon a time there was a little small house in the middle of the Black Forest with a little group of fairies casting gothic-tinged spells, some years later a necromancer noticed the music spread out by this little creatures’ ensemble was a good and safe thing and so he decided to pronounce a magical formula to turn into a wonderful and luminescent castle... It’s not just a silly fable to let your puppets deeply sleep, but it could be a transposition of the story behind the astonishing Equinoxe Records, a label which moved his very first steps in the summer of 1998 in order to provide an independent release platform to the legendary German Gothic Rock band The House Of Usher by avoiding the subjections and compromises of the usual market mechanisms. Nowadays Equinoxe is one of the most interesting reality of the music market but in spite of a 10 years-long activity and more than one hundred releases (and notwithstanding the leaving of two of the four founders, who decided to move on to other endevours) the enthusiasm which inspired their action is almost unchanged and it seems to be the same of the beginning. The tireless publishing effort of this German label let us discover a plenty of interesting bands coming from those music grounds... but the story (or the fable?) of Equinoxe keep on surprising with two remarkable highlights i.e. an agreement in 2003 with the professional distributor ALIVE and the almost concomitant decision to create an electro sub-label, e-noxe, digging into the rich electronic music soil – that’s why this 10-versary sampler is also a celebration of the 5-years birthday of e-noxe!-. As it happens in almost every respectable fable, it should be a frightening ghost, a pustule covered angry ogre, a ravenous wolf or any other monster-like character playing an antagonist role in the set: as everyone knows, the music industry has deeply changed with the advent of internet and file-sharing, one of the greatest threat to many labels – especially the smallest ones -, reducing the possibilities of surviving in an highly competitive market, featuring an excess of supply never experienced before. But this "new order" resulted in a sort of new challenge for Equinoxe masterminds and that’s why the brave efforts mainly focused on any possible attempts to improve the quality of the releases without neglecting the roots behind any bizarre form of stylistic "revisionism". So we could say that this 16-track sampler combining exquisite pieces of both catalogues (the Equinoxe and e-noxe ones!) – with a lot of special tracks by bands which filled the roster from the very first day such as House Of Usher and interesting newcomers such as Psyche and Silvery... - has a particular meaning for the men behind the label curtains! Not only a gift and a sort of thanksgiving to all supporters of the label all over the world, but also an invite to breathe on the 15 candlesticks to join to the bacchanalia! But please don’t forget to... keep the fire burning, folks!!!

Hey, folks... please take your eyes off the green-filtered (you should know that green is an hypnotic color, shouldn't you?) picture of the entrancing neckline of that cutie model on the artwork and respect our fatigue of reviewing records for hours and hours just for a while as the Munster old gothic school seems to be more active than ever... Well, after the renowned issue of the prog-rock band Long Distance Call, here it is the second long-awaited act (... the whole fan-base and those critics which acclaimed to their debut Anodyne have patiently waited for five years their coming back in a studio recording... ) by Neon Dream, a fine band of contemporary gothic novelist and music translators of "dark" feelings swarming in the bowels of contemporary society into a musical idiom deeply rooted in the traditional gothic-rock ground' it's almost impossible to deny a certain influence of bands such as Paradise Lost - enhanced by some elements deriving from metal and wave and inventing a sort of (not so) fictional plot with a fertile level of metaphorical imaginary. In the illuminating preface to the record, the band headed up by singer Klaus Mollers' his gloomy voice is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable element of Neon Dream's line up... - clearly states that their main theme is "war and aggression against life" and quoting a famous sentence of Platoon ("We did not fight against an enemy. We fought against ourselves. The Enemy was inside us") in order to describe the state of the art of the mankind today, they identify their source of inspiration in a sort of nightly revelation inside of which there could be an hidden remedy ("It is despair, that characterizes all the beliefs in imaginary spiritual forces... call them god. Because: did those powers ever arrive or have been seen yet at all? I watch out for them every night. Hours, in which all lyrics of this album were written"... that's maybe why the album metaphorically begins with an atmospheric intro entitled "Flight to Dusk"... there're even some samples of an helicopter just to underline the technology evolution since the times of wax wings by Daedelus! ). Metropolitan West is not only what is normally known as a "conceptual album", even if its cohesion could suggest it, but the honeycombed way this band well balance gothic influences with metal and new wave excerpts is a body of evidence of their musical skills, which are clear since the first track Black Cicada, a sort of allegorical spell highlighted by a somber vocal interpretation by Klaus, whose visionary but not inducted by hallucinogenic drugs (!) state reach a peak in the title-track, a track which stylistically has a more "commercial" appeal, reminding to us some tv fictional series' soundtracks and classical goth-rock throughout airy sounds and sequenced guitar sets. We really like the inspired lyrics of Stealth, a sort of call-to-arms combined with a disquieting transliteration of a modern incubus in the "trillion lights up to 90th floor" of a skyscraper, which is depicted almost as a treasure of terrible mysteries connected to homologation plans ("crowds rushed beneath dark skies/Woman and man . dressed the same") transcending common people's imagination... ! Melancholy and depression as well as a sick sense of inadequacy are the leitmotiv which seems to inspire Veils , while in Agnostic there's a synth-pop pigment which doesn't disfigure the darkish visions of the whole album as well the touch of medieval folk harmonies roosting on Last Hours harmonies. The next track, "Exil" the only one with German lyrics with his industrial-novelistic wit and a hieratical tic-tac of a pendulum clock is with no doubt one of the most atmospheric one (and one of my favorite one). The harder side of Neon Dreamz' sound is surely Child Night Dream, which partially join with the support the band's giving to the Kim Foundation for helping children who physically or mentally suffer from war experiences (have a look to the foundation website: http://www.www.kimfoundation.com) . Some influences by the famous Finnish goth-roch band 69 Eyes on the luscious Sexaholica, while Human Replica seems to be another lucid inversion of a predictive dreamlike realism. The bonus track, Overscreening, with gears moving from the new-wave scene, is another body of evidence showing how diversified Neon Dream style seems to be! Thanks for your attention... now you can look elsewhere!

"The future is now" ... and it is obviously bad smelling... First full-length album signed by the evocative moniker of Splatterpunk (a term coined by D.J.Schow in order to describe a movement which rebels against the traditional horror fictional structure by depicting â?“ even from the graphical viewpoint â?“ the violence in a very tangible way and using horror novels just as a tool to propose a non-fictional analysis of the most disgusting portraits of the daily social life in a provocative way!), an interesting ebm project empowered by sharp reviews of contemporary lunacy, ideally broadcasted on channel 83, the highest frequency (now defunct) for NTSC-M terrestrial broadcasting! Even if there �re a plenty of references to some EBM classics, itâ??s evident that a rich eclectic vein pulses using new music forms to propel its sometimes "subversive" messages in Splatterpunkâ??s electromechanical body and Oscar Javierre Payà aka F18, the man behind this moniker, keep on dissecting the foggy pall enwrapping media-COMtrolled minds through an exquisite blend of sound tricks and well-crafted frequencies full of style variations, which sounds really good and absolutely enjoyable according to our ear response! Rooted down in the cyberpunk fertile cultural ground, the lyrics contains some eruptive statements since the beginning: Future Shock is a good ebm-techno liberation march related to the almost scientifical control some mass media use for enticing minds through apparently inoffensive bombing of info-shit ("digital emotion is the wrong devotion, connected to their lies by optic fiber line") and the nice Psychoterminal (... itâ??s adorable that girlâ??s voice contrasting with the hoarse one by Oscar repeating in an obsessive way "psycho"!) continues with the similar themes which is a sort of leitmotiv of the whole album, inherited by a lot of ebm and dark past acts ("the operative system that they install on your mind is just a simple extension of their fucking masterplan" evokes some dystopian writings by the legendary Philip K.Dick). After the whistling and suppurative minimalistic My Neurosis with the classic crumbling on some brassâ??nâ??bass sounds with an 808 State-like (to be honest, we should speak about a 909-State!!!) rhythmical pattern, thereâ??s the first pit stop, Robot Interface, a mumbling little candy (a little more than one minute is enough to take breath... !) with technospheric soundings which stands almost like a sort of tribute to Kraftwerk lessons before the further snapshot on social manias (un)frozen in the track Hi Technology, Low Life, a good example of danceable yeasty lo-fi tunes with grizzling "vocoderized" captions for a technologized world suffocated sentencing "the time has come and it will never come back again, we live in the last step of the final end", a nostalgic caress before the retro-futuristic high-propelled track Renegade Hacker 3.0 (prepare to repeat a lot of words ending with â?“tion if you like to sing this song while dancing, folks!!!!). What a great track for a supposedly forthcoming Apocalypse engineered by Intel!!! Mr.Ralph appears again on Self Isolation, a catchy conglomerate of pitiful assumptions on people which decide to live this condition as a way of escapism... what canâ??t be cured must be endured... ! A bleeding conceptual passage from robotic to zombie interface (not casual!) before another bath in an acid pool throughout the trance inducted by the well-done XXX-Terminator and the (voi)dances on a sort of vituperative "thrust and parry" in Suicde Epidemix ("Iâ??m tired to see you in these fuckin photos, throw away this shit, it shows your selfâ??s lightlessness" seems to be the words a strong-minded friend will shout to an absent-minded one loving filling his albums on facebook!!!). Turbina Neoplastic with the flux of exercises on throaty beating vocals is certainly not my favorite track (even if it contains good samples), while the howls introducing the romantic intercepted love affair (letâ??s say so!) of an idiot and a mechanical whore (containing a sample of the lies by Jose Maria Aznar told to Spanish people to justify the war on Irak... you should already know the bullshits on Iraki mass destructive weapons... shame on you, politicians!) is surely one of my favorite ones! Donâ??t forget to have a listen (and some jumpy steps) on the two remixes included in the album, among which the ASCII-Disko one of XXX Terminator is an highlight! My personal compliments to Die-6 form Barcellona for pictures and artwork (well... the "fluttering" girl on cover artwork presumably taken from a Japanese porno movie is not the next picture taken from Berlusconiâ??s Sardinean villa family album bought by El Pais!!!).