DreamVeil - Agressor

I've been dreading writing this review. I almost wish that this EP / Single / whatever it is, was so bad that I could decimate it in an illustrious manner.

But it isn't. It's just... pedestrian.

There are six tracks on this release, ranging from electronic rock to electro industrial, I guess. The disc is made up of two tracks, "Agressor" and "Illusornaya Mechta" padded out with three lifeless remixes and an outro. With any luck you won't last long enough to get to the outro.

The sound is a clash of guitars, synths and male Russian vocals. The players themselves evidently have some talent, in isolation each element (plus the vocals) works well. Put it all together though, and it's a complete mess.

The opening track "Agressor" seems to offer some promise from the start, with a distorted lead melting into some great synth and riff-heavy guitar work. The first hint that something is terribly, terribly wrong hits you as a dubstep line is unceremoniously dumped into the mix. A mere seconds later, we are launched into the chorus, which doesn't work or fit in with anything around it. It's a failure of songwriting, not instrumentation.

The "Old School Industrial Dance Remix" of the same track is curiously named. I'd be more inclined to call it synthpop. Bad, annoyingly warbling synthpop. Let's move on, quickly. We only have remixes of "Illusornaya Mechta", and I'm not exactly inspired to lift a finger to lay my hands on the original. The pick of the bunch is the Meltdown remix. IF, and only if, you take a razor blade and cut out everything past the 1:10 mark. After that the stirringly beautiful string synths are crushed under the weight of an uninspiring club track.

The production is pretty bad. The drums need more bite, the synths more depth, the whole thing needs to be EQ'ed in order to clear up the sonic mush. All of that is irrelevant if the song writing is not improved upon. These guys are good musicians. They can do better. Nov 05 2012