Disharmony - "Evolution"

Artist: Disharmony
Album: Evolution
Year: 2009
Label: Tympanik Audio
Genre: Electronica / IDM / Industrial
Website: http://www.disharmony.aliens.sk








Composition: 8/10
Pretty synths and harsh drums => good. The singer's vocal style of unintelligible rasp + reverb is unfortunate, because it has already been so beaten to death... and clashes comedic-ly with an otherwise very pretty, dark, and serious album. However it does change somewhat... with a very nice vocoder effect on "Euphoric". Nice strings, a few bits of chorus, piano here and there... Cool bass sounds, rather than "cheezy bass lines". More down tempo-y trip hop influenced than really upbeat. Dark Slovakian electronica. Not "clubby" sounding at all, which is good. This would be good general music to have playing while driving somewhere or cooking pancakes... if you can get past the singer.


Artistic Merit: ??/10
I don't know. This album is called "Evolution", but from the band's website and their label's page for this album I can't really find anything about any deeper concept here other than "these are some pretty, dark electronic songs we wrote", or as the band puts it on their own website: "Minimalisthicaly sounding surfaces wrapped with harmonical surfaces and mysterious atmospheres are characteristical marks of this new slovak project". Sure. Maybe this is a tribute to our evolution from benevolent amino acids floating about a primordial sea to our current state of polluting, war mongering, atom splitting, fossil fuel burning disgrace... or perhaps it is reflective of the band's sound having evolved from their previous releases. I don't know. It's dark electronica. I guess the world could use some more.

Flow: 8/10
Good flow. Nice transitions. Pretty steady throughout.

Overall Rating: 5/10
There's some neat stuff here. Good electronica with a so-so singer. Pretty and dark. Songs like "Izometrix" or "Coloseum" are really awesome dark electronica songs! My recommendation is that they ditch the singer and start doing soundtracks for dystopian films. Sorry, but it is 2009. If you have good lyrics you want to communicate fine... but if you just want to bullshit 'scream' unintelligible rasps over good music... no one needs to pay money to hear / see that anymore... and no good producer needs to waste their time devaluing their tracks by subjecting them to such treatment.