Cynical Existence - We Are The Violence

Oh, snap. It's time for more Cynical Existence. That's right, Swedish based musician Fredrik Croona is back up and running with his third full length album under the Cynical Existence moniker, only this time he isn't alone. No, he's bringing in some heavy talent with the likes of Filip Lonnqvist of Rave The Reqviem on guitars, as well as George Klontzas of PreEmptive Strike 0.1 on production. This trio of badass music makers have forged one hell of an evil, maniacal music baby that's called We Are The Violence.

From the get go, a very stompy, club friendly mix is presented in full form. The title track hits first, and CE has never sounded so good. The electrorock sound merged with the electro creates such a lovely affair. Croona's gritty, screaming chords go hand in hand with each layer of electronic madness poured out of this song. And what's even more wondrous is that there are thirteen more songs that will rock and rivet you to sheer pleasure.

Trance influences infect Wake Up Call, with a bit more of a strict electronic beat taking over. Heartless presents clean vocals with the screaming, which sort of changes up the pace, but still tacks on nicely. The Kill follows wrecks havoc with more guitar work from Filip, but it cuts short out of nowhere and goes straight into War of Times. Perhaps this was deliberate; perhaps not. For the most part, this song uses futuristic, robot like vocals and has a smooth electronic beat; I think the screaming could have taken a backseat this time around.

You shined from around the one minute and fifty second mark to the two minute and forty second mark. What happens there is sheer magic; clean vocals, heavy trance elements, and a great beat all come together. The Dead Empire was very fast paced and came off more electrorock-ish than previous bouts. Affliction of Self Torture had more love towards club friendly music.

The next song featured Wojciech Krol of Controlled Collapse delivering some trademark vocals on the track. Clean, more emotional and compassionate, it paired nicely against the harder beat. Sweet Dreams hit in with some similar sounds that came in previously on the album, but had some pretty cool dual vocals in the mix.

Sovereign was a track that you could easily just dance to; straight instrumental with what I believe to be a distorted sample injected into the track. It was really fun and frenzied. Amputation of the Soul provided some neat synth work that gave it a bit of a spiritual feel. I'm not sure if that's quite the right term to be using...But it's the only word I can think of at the moment so it's going to have to stay.

I don't have much to say about The Betrayal, but the last song, We Are Through comes off as one of the quickest songs on the album. Perhaps the quickest. Anyway, it gave off one final, blazing ride through CE's lovely music making formula.

And, yes, I find myself quite enjoying these tunes very, very much. I swear, within the first two songs I actually had to get up and move around to the beat a bit. Which, for me, isn't dancing, it's more like wildy throwing my fists in the air which makes it look like some type of tribal ritual is about to commence.

While some of the songs did come off with similar sounds, they were spread out on the album in between more unique songs. Coincidentally, that helped in removing the fundamental flaw that albums have, and that's putting tracks back to back that have similar get-ups. CE avoided this very well.

Anyway, this was released through Alfa-Matrix, so go take a look at it and pick it up for yourself. I don't think you'll find yourself disappointed with the harder songs that have emerged off this album. Apr 01 2015