Anax Imperator - Nekropop

Anax Imperator is a Norwegian band and the members are Nikolai "Nikko" Kleppe, Henrik Brautaset Aronsen, Tollef Ladehaug and Per-Christian Nilsen. Parts of the band have built up the goth- and synth scene in Norway and arrange the club Dominion and the festival Oslo Synthfestival amongst other things.

The self-released album 'Nekropop' is the first full-length record the band has released, though they have released an E.P with the name 'Helvetes Dyster E.P' four years ago.

The band themselves thinks they play some kind of hard, gothic, industrial synth music with pop elements. I on the other hand think they are much better arrangers of festivals than creating music. It's even hard to describe it. The closest I'm able to get is to describe it as some kind of experimental "bash-anything-that-looks-cool-and-sample-it" with segments of Das Ich and infected nipple piercings.

They 18 tracks long album (79:09 min) are finished off with 5 remixes of the Norwegian bands Pride and Fall, superJupiter, Conetik, Atripine and Wolfendorn were all of them have performed at the Oslo Synthfestival at least once.

This review was written 2004 and initially published on Neurozine.com Jan 01 2004