Customer Reviews

The Enemy

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Acylum's last recording, Mental Disorder, was a masterpiece of the harshest type of electro/industrial. Unfortunately, following in the footsteps of many other great acts, Acylum's release of a The Enemy as a 2-cd "Deluxe Box" with stickers, a poster, and a bonus cd of remixes, coincides with a slide into mediocrity. Other great names have done the same: Xotox, Covenant, Tamtrum, God Module, Virtual Embrace and more have all released eagerly awaited follow-up albums in this bloated format, and all have been major disappointments. The 2-cd box format seems to be such a curse that it should be avoided by record labels at all costs.

The other major death knell for an act has been the inclusion of the girlfriend in the band. Like God Module and others, Acylum has allowed the girlfriend to add her "talents" to the album. On The Enemy, the female vocals are nasal, whiny, and have an aggravating sing-song rhyme structure that sometimes sounds like watered-down rap, and is quite simply distracting, annoying, and gives the whole album a juvenile feeling...there's also a weird euro hip-hop vibe that keeps sneaking in on certain songs.

The good parts of this recording feature extremely harsh, multi-layered beats, with march-like structures instead of conventional song forms. When the vocals are good, they come off as blasts of distorted rage, or crazed chants. Most of the lyrics are in German, as are the samples.

The bad parts of the recording feature a bit of back-and-forth between the male and female vocalists. On those songs the male vocals don't have the same chaotic and rage-fueled energy, but drop into a sing-songy, oddly repetitive rhyme structure that simply sounds annoying and childish. As I wrote above, some songs even feature strange hip-hop like beat elements, which simply detract from the claustrophobic, dense, and anger-fueled feeling of the more successful songs.

In summation, if you haven't heard Acylum before, I heartily suggest you check out their previous release, Mental Disorder. I can't really recommend The Enemy, even if you are a big fan of Acylum already, since this release is such a departure in style and quality from the previous recordings.