Eden Synthetic Corps - Breathing Salt

'Breathing Salt', the fourth album from this Portuguese foursome really marks a departure for the band, compared to their last three albums. Not so much in terms of quality but more so in terms of style and the tightened focus on melody and fluidity.

The album feels liberatingly fresh and has a great deal of dark feel to it. The vocals are still distorted but not so heavily as on their previous releases, they feel somewhat more in sync with the music. Several songs feature spoken words and it mixes perfectly with the harsh vocals creating a brilliant balance between ugly and beautiful. A perfect example of this is the fantastic track "Commander Cruel" which starts out with a slow pounding beat and a beatifully arranged spoken word session on top, and majestic darkwave vocals for the refrain, perfectly composed.

I never found myself bored at any point throughout this album. They keep the dynamic and the tension at a maximum all the way through. It's seriously melodic but at the same time, it's manically aggressive. "God's Own Miserable Exception"and "Determinism" are two tracks that should explain my claim upon listening.
Another thing is that the album just gets better and better the more you listen. It has so many great details to it you might not spot at first glance, but after listening to it severely over the past couple of weeks I just keep spotting fine layers of brilliance all over the place. This type of music is best experienced through a nice pair of headphones.

It's also safe to say that the production has seen it's fair share of face lift since last time. Not that any of their previous albums had nothing close to bad production, but this time around it feels tighter and with a sharper edge. And it really serves the band well, highlighting all their strengths as the great dark electro act they are.

It's a thrill to get albums like this. In a genre that gets more and more tiresome and where bands seem to be running out of fuel, Eden Synthetic Corpse seems to do the opposite, reborn and fueled to the neck they managed to bring the excitement back. May 30 2013