The Laine Gebel's one-mand band "Ex Nihilo" has a total retrospective conception, completely focused on the electro-goth fisrt school born between the half and end of the 80's from the wedding of the Christian Death's macabre perversion with the DAF and Nitzer Ebb's first synthetic pulsations. So you will find grandiose keyboards cascades, possessed and wicked voices, deacadent melodic bass lines and all other classic ingredients that made the history of this genre. It's a pity that the production has a poor quality, because although the album is not original and fossilized on old ideas however it sounds enjoyable, funny and sufficiently various. I prefere when Ex Nihilo hit on the accelerator, reaching the emphasis of the furious EBM and approaching the Hocico's devilish attitude. Surely i think this cd is more appreciable and honest than several releases of idolized and famous EBM bands that make up a perfect hit single for the charts and then repeat the same versus for ten songs!

Seven tracks for 50 minutes of beating industrial with harsh drum machine constructions. OverVoltage bet on songs built upon only rythmic compositons, sometimes entering on techno territories ("Transmitter"), but this means a limit for this cd. Often the song evolution is too much scholastic and little various, expecially in the first two tracks, "Kanci" and "Scheduling", where the drum march is so much fast as boring. Things get better with the syncopatic movements generated on the fifth track "Lodki", but the real top track of the album is "Belaruzer ver.b" with a interesting progress and an intelligent superimposition of sounds. With this track of eleven minutes OverVoltage show that they are able to create passages worthy of praise, but this is too much little to save this work from boredom.

Surely this project created by Konstantin Myzireb (sampling) and Vlad Buben (voice, programming, keys) will make the happiness of everyone who loves industrial music for it's coldness and hypnotic power. "Le Cauchemar" is a good trip between monolithic wheels and swirling loop sounds, sustained by filtered voices and some melodic lines.The first track "Porto"will introduce you in a synthetic nightmare with church choirs under decomposed patterns of noise. "Cointreau" and "Chartreuse" are mourning laments of dying ruined gears, but the best track maybe is the five one, "Play for it", where upon a trip-hop rithmic basement mount up obsessives keyboards, that remind me some good songs of the early Coil, very gloomy and threatening. However all the six tracks sounds dark and full of decadent spirit, ideal soundtrack for a slow descent into deep restlesness.

"Velvet" is an album oriented on a gothic rock/darkwave style, with metal influences, in the vein of late Tiamat and Moonspell. Some good melodies created by the keyboards offer some pretty cues, but the hard guitar riffing is too much expected and in it's totality this belgian band unfortunately don't convince. The songs structure remains always bounded to old schemes, denoting a lack of personality and a poverty of ideas. Moreover, Star Industry spoil the Roxette's best hits "The look", with a terrible cover.