X-Tropeaos - Fight Club

X-Tropeaos was created from the evil mind of its three perverse members Albert, Roger and Daniel from Barcelona to bring their anger to the rest of humanity. Combining aggressive sounds and heartbreaking rhythms, with a distinctive spicy humor, so that listening to their music will be an eye-opening experience in terms of hard emotions. If you think you're ready to get into this bizarre world of hard beats, they welcome you. Fight Club is an album of eleven tracks, including 3 remixes from The Stelliumy, Chainreactor and Terrolokaust, and described as kick-ass electro.

Our first track is "Fight Club", also title of the album. I like the sample usage, and it's very techno influenced and sounds like Darude's "Sandstorm" in places. That apart it has a good beat and rhythm and may fill a dance floor with those great techno like synth lines. "Hypocrites", starts with emergency sirens, and this time samples in Spanish rather than English. This sounds like it could go somewhere, but it doesn't as apart from the samples and drum beat when it build up it's a bit flat and dull, particularly synth wise.

A fierce drum beat and screams and background vocals greet us in "Hunt and Kill". It has a nice aggressive drum beat, but apart from that it will get lost in the crowd when it comes to the aggrotech scene. "Dead Terrorist, Nice Terrorist" has a techno drum beat, but sounds like it has a muffled Crazy Frog in the background at one point. For me a mixture of things that really does nothing.

A storm blows in "Olivator", with synths to match and then we have a pounding aggressive drum beat, good in parts apart from the repetitive vocals. Once those vocals stop it continues to drive on into a better but hardly memorable track. "We Love Violence" brings more techno beats and this time some female samples distorted into something I don't like at all, they make me cringe. Everytime they repeat I want to turn it off. There is more than five minutes of this track!

"Arena" is no better, four repetitive minutes plus of techno sounds and drums and going nowhere. "Mechanical Hatred" has the same pounding drums accompanied by some nasty squealing synth sounds. They sound like someone playing a Kazoo, which doesn't seem to go with someone playing aggressive music.

I expect something better from our first remix "Fight Club (Terrolokaust RMX)", as I like that track and the remixer. It's not a bad listen and sounds even more like Darude. Apart from that the drums pound and the synths pump and blend together just as they should in this kind of music. The "Hypocrites (Chainreactor RMX)", bangs and crashes nicely, then pounds and drives building on the original track. I said the original went nowhere, but this does in a typical Chainreactor head banging powerful and rhythmic style.

We finish with another version of "Fight Club" the even more techno, "Fight Club (The Stelliumy RMX)". Not such a problem for me as I like techno but it loses the rhythm completely of the original track for most of it and then suddenly turns drum and bass. Too much for me and I fear for most people.

Conclusion:
I have scored this album as a five but only just and the band have a long way to go before they can join those on their list of likes. But tracks like "Fight Club" which is by far the best track on the album shows there is potential. Glimpses of this are shown in other tracks like "Hunt and Kill". The "Hypocrites (Chainreactor RMX)", is very good and the "Fight Club (Terrolokaust RMX)" not far behind and recommended also. Jul 24 2012