Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
There's still good music being made, April 29, 2005
Despite what's overplayed on the radio and MTV, there is still awesome music to be found out there, you just have to look for it. Neuroticfish are one of the better synth bands out today, and they continue to improve with each new album. Gelb is great from start to finish, although I didn't like this album as much when I first listened to it as I do now. There were 3 songs that I instantly liked: the Bomb, I don't need the City, and Suffocating Right, and eventually, I ended up liking all the stuff in between also, it just took some time to grow on me. What I really enjoy about NF are Sascha's vocals. At times he almost sounds like Dave Gahan---very mellow and soothing. At first some of the more dancier songs kind of turned me off. It was almost a blurred line between synth-rock and straight foreward dance music, a line which is certain death for me if it's crossed, but I soon decided this was a whole lot deeper and darker than your average crappy club music. This is the best NF material that I've heard to date, though I don't have a lot of their earlier stuff. This is really a good album, and if you love 80's bands like Depeche Mode, OMD, New Order, Fad Gadget, or Kraftwerk, this is for you. The only complaints that I have about this are some of the corny voice-overs and samples at times are kinda cheesy, and the run-of-the-mill cliche keyboard sound thats prevelant throughout most of the songs, but by no means do these things ruin this album at all, it's really quite good.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still growing on me, March 8, 2006
When one gets into electronic music, they usually either embrace everything that is remotely electro in sound, or they become very picky about what they like in the genre. Unfortunately for me, I became the latter. I can only embrace electronic music that shows me something I've never experienced before, and it's very hard to find new music that I like. But Gelb is flowering before me into an album I can embrace, and place at the top of my "comtemporary favorite" list. The first initial listen may sound like another dark electro album, employing many of the commonly used techniques in the techno/EBM/synthpop scene. But it doesn't take long to realize there's something deeper at work here. The brilliance of "I don't need the city" is what initially pulled me in, musically and lyrically, and the rest of the album opened up to me as a result.
Much of the genius of Neuroticfish, in my opinion, is the wide range of the vocals. They can be quite mad in one tune, and beautifully emotive and sympathetic in the next. "They're coming to take me away" was a total surprise to me, as I've never heard a gothy techno song sung that way, and it makes me smile every time I hear it.
To the EBM fan, this ablum is a gold mine. To the picky electro fans like myself, this album is worth a listen at the very least. It is different--refreshingly different--and a fine piece of art.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yes indeed, EBM is Dead, July 3, 2006
It has been a long while since I last submitted a review on amazon because I have been calmly waiting for that divine inspiration to catch me off guard when I least expect it. You see, I had been in a bit of a funk lately, as I'd found myself in what was shaping up to be a sizable drought in regards to finding some new music that really moved me, both inside and out. Enter: Neuroticfish. As menacingly delicious as Mr. Sascha himself, this fish has one potent bite.
Honestly, who knows what genre this type of music truly fits into; synthpop, future pop, new wave, darkwave, ebm, industrial---it's all electronic and good from my perspective. However I must also admit that like one of the previous reviewers, I am quite picky about what I will listen to and enjoy. It takes a lot more than a few 'hot beats' blasting out of a subwoofer to make me happy. The comparisons to Apop, VNV, etc are all relevant, but while I am familiar with and respect those so-called "Top contenders of the EBM scene," I feel that Neuroticfish music posesses a depth and vibrancy to it that is fresh, exhilarating and immensely satisfying, which is more than what I can say for any other "EBM" band.
The music pumps and throbs with all the seasonings of top notch dark, dance club beats and is also MELODIC, which seems to be a commodity that often places it into the classification of synthpop, which of course automatically gets the label of being too wimpy, poppy, sappy to be labeled as EBM(And I thought goths were picky.) But alas, it's not until we hear Sascha's deep, butterflies-in-stomach-inducing voice that the magic truly begins. He sings with a variety of colorful emotions that range from heart wrenching and tinged with animmosity to tastefully demented("They're coming to take me away" is a song that my mother described as being freaky, disturbing music of a carnival gone quite wrong, ha ha) and melodic(Yes, that deep baritone DOES sometimes resemble David Gahan, which is the highest compliment that one can possibly get from me.) This music has the intense, catchy, and emotional clout of first rate synthpop combined with the deliriously ecstatic dance riffs of EBM. Standout tracks are the intense "I don't need the city," "Waving hands,"The bomb," "They're coming to take me away," and "I never chose you."
Pretender and not a contender? I doubt Sascha is trying to distinguish himself as a product of any 'scene' anyway. Afterall, EBM is dead =)
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