Schattenschlag - Psychosis

I've been pushing this in front of me quite some time now. Trying to shape feelings into words and it has been harder than I thought. But this is my honest try.

'Psychosis' is the third album from Joachim Sobczak's Schattenschlag and what surprises me is that with that kind of experience (debut album came in 2002) he releases, what essentially, is an unfinished product. It's not unfinished in that sense that vocals is missing or it's half tracks, rather the sound is somewhat muffled, like when you are on a concert and put earplugs in, half the sound spectra goes away. Either something is very wrong with the promo I got, or this thing has been rushed trough mastering.

If you ignore the sound quality for a while and focus on the tracks themselves, we have got some solid Harsh EBM tunes here. There's nothing extraordinary though, but there's some solid tracks with "Shizophrenia", "Anthology of a Psychopath". But since he is mixing it some Hardstyle'sh tracks, it get's a very random feeling and even though I enjoy "Zucht Ordnung Electro", I have a very hard time with tracks like "Isolation" for an example, very generic dance floor music. And the track "Confusion Illusion", which I do enjoy, is a far way from the sound of the first couple of tracks.

And that is just the problem, instead of a single moulded piece, it's a structure that is somewhat put together with clay and mud. I would suggest to future releases that instead of trying to attack every front at the same time, do one solid attack on one front. And whatever you do, don't skip the important mastering. Apr 27 2011