Customer Reviews

Drill

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is top-notch Bill Leeb/Rhys Fulber material, and it is all executed in that very robotic, sometimes intense, way that is prevalent on most Frontline Assembly albums (Leeb's full-time band). One does suspect that a lot of these side projects came about due to "left-over" FLA songs.

Back to the album: the first half is fully-energized, and 3 of the first 5 tracks feature guitars that are perfectly incorporated into the noise of the electronic beats, bass, and keyboards. These first 5 songs are excellent. None of the songs feature any vocals, save for the occassional sample. "Miracle" is my favorite track, with a movie sample from "Lord of Illusions." It's a powerful song. Also, "Eye Burner" uses some drum n bass techniques to an effective end.

"Sloth," "Neuron," and "Other World," are all great songs in their own right, but they disrupt the flow of the album slightly. "Other World" sounds very much like a Delerium track(another of Leeb's side projects, only much more popular). However, "Penance" is a nice, sort of restrained, drum n bass number that ends the album quite well, with great keyboard work.

None of the tracks are groundbreaking, but this album is again proof that not all great things are necessarily innovative or cutting-edge. If you like industrial/goth/metal, et al., than pick this one up.

And although I enjoyed the previous Noise Unit album, "Decoder," I was glad to see that they had moved on to try new things (drum n bass, etc.). Noise Unit's "Strategy of Violence" is also very good -- but it may sound quite dated to some.

This is not a dark album, or a dancy goa album. It's old fashioned techno in the vein of Kraftwerk and KLF. And coming from the boys of FLA, you know you're gonna get a good helping of 80's sci-fi movie samples! Almost every song on this disc makes good, relaxing background music that you can space out to. NOT dance music.

I am well underway in my quest of purchasing all of Leeb's, Fulber and Peterson's side projects and manifestations. Fulber and Leeb are best noted for their stewardship of Delerium, FrontLine Assembly entities. They have been partners from the early 1990's and have created many side projects, some turned out duds but others tuned out pretty good like Intermix and Pro>Tech. This is Noise Unit, here Leeb and Fulber experimented with new sounds and input and this shows with the song's creativity that captivates the listener. 'Drill' is Noise Unit's debut and its a highly complex and mysterious album. These are not dance or trance songs like so many other of Leeb's works are but a purely machine like industrialized sound. The songs that stand-out for me in this release are 'Miracle', 'Other World' and 'Penance'.
This CD is for fans of early Delerium and people who like FLA will totally enjoy this offering. The new sounds complement the industrial gothic beats to create a fiesta of listening quality.

Drill being Noise Units 1997 release is a plethora of influences. They have some influence from Ministry with the heavy guitar riffs, some from Mar Verhagen with the choice of quirky sounds, a bit of their own side projects like intermix, delerium, FLA and finally a dose from Haujobb. I love everything Leeb does and so it was like obligatory for me to buy this release. I love the sound, beat, and love how they said that "all tracks were conceived and manipulated" as if written by sounds just to lame. The cover design by Carylann is quite mysterious and I have no idea what she is trying to convey. The book has no information inside and I felt quite cheated by this but not surprised as their albums hardly ever do.

This album is odd. To use the only analogy I can think of to describe it here we go:

If a normal music album were a human being who you could talk to and grow to love, Noise Unit's Drill would be some insane alien creature that inspires curiosity and is overall pretty weird and hard to understand.

Their is a morass of effects/samples that have the complex layers of Skinny Puppy mixed with a somewhat more music touch. Drums give the songs a force that holds them together and stops them from just being creepy and ambient. Drill is still very dark, with samples used for twisted lyrics that can sometimes send a chill down your spine.

This album also has the benefit of not suffering from the weakness of many other experimental industrial albums - repetition. It switches effects often enough to keep you interested and overall comes off very strong for its genre, though you basically need to listen to it without doing much else or it will just be odd noises.

Intense, unique, fresh and really good are the best words to describe this album. "The Drain", "Other World", " Prostitute" are some of the songs which are really worth listening. However, i still miss the "Strategy of Violence" sound. But don't fret, "Drill" is quite good. I give this a two thumbs-up!!

This album isn't as good as Decoder, which is the best Noise Unit release IMO. It is a darker album and the beats attempt to be more interesting, but I find that the songs don't really have as good a coherency as they could have had... for me, the sampled guitar was not a welcome addition -- it only detracts from the rest of the music in the context of the songs on this album (I really liked the sampled guitar on Millenium, for example -- it fit there). This album is okay, but there are plenty of other much better albums. It's a shame that the songs fall apart so much and get boring on repeated listens -- Decoder was such a great album that I was expecting more than this... especially with the addition of Haujobb to the list of people helping create it...

excelent albumn, much inline with the decoder, but less electronic, more sampled guitar, if you like haujobb, and are tired of the redundat industrial of most modern artisits (KMFDM, cubanate, etc...) than this album is for you, if you "hate that techno s***" than go buy the new stabbing westward...