Cryo - Hidden Aggression

My opinions about Cryo's first album 'Cryogenic' from 2006 was that it was a good debut album, but not great. I felt that it was a bit plain and biased; luckily some of those issues have been improved with the latest release 'Hidden Aggression'.

The new album is actually quite varied; it goes from slow and moody to dance, almost techno, oriented. The music is really good independently of style. "I Tune In", "Weitergehen" and "Substance" are all good examples of where you can easily hear Cryo's musical development and evolvement. These are also some of my favourite tracks from the album.

Though my absolute favourite is actually "Counting Down Again" where Martin's sister is singing with a very bluesy voice that I actually first thought it was sampled from some great old song from the 50's. This track is a perfect 10 of 10 altogether. Great blend between her voice and the music.

Even though I really like the sample from the movie Ondskan (named Evil in English) in the track "Hit Me Once" I think the overall tune feel a bit outdated from the rest of the tracks.

One of my concerns about Cryo is that the vocals seems a bit dazed off to me. I would love to hear some more aggressiveness in Martins voice. Sure, it's meant to sound cold, but I think it's possible to combine the two.

For two days now I've been thinking about my rating of this album. Actually, when I'm writing this line, in the end of my review, I'm still not sure what will be my final decision. If I was able to set a 7.5 I would do so, it?s a good album, but it is not a great release in my opinion. I think it's a 7... no it's an 8... no... it's... I guess you will see my final decision in the upper right corner. Mar 03 2010