Review Summary: The first really good industrial metal album of the year, in large part due to the abundance of guest musicians.
Industrial is often criticized for its terrible vocals. It would be hard for anyone to deny that a lot of these bands’ vocals are very monotonous and generally processed to the point of absurdity. This is often compounded by very two-dimensional music and a total lack of ideas. There are those that can look past these issues, but the better option is to just find bands that avoid these pitfalls from the start – Chile’s Vigilante is one of those bands that have found a good way of keeping their music fresh. They do this by inviting people to guest on every song. At first glance, this might sound like a very gimmicky approach but it works and the band’s music proves that having the guests is just icing on an already well-constructed cake.
The album actually begins a little deceivingly with a very dark, atmospheric introduction that will remind people of the psychological mindfuck created by electro bands such as
Acylum and
Life Cried, but the feeling is short lived. The rest of the album is a near-perfect exercise in solid industrial metal that manages to avoid feeling redundant due to the abundance of guest musicians. These musicians include Hanin Elias (previously of
Atari Teenage Riot) on the song “The New Order”. It’s a high-energy dance song that alternates between dissonant and catchy thanks to the excellent chorus and gritty guitar riff. Later in the album Jurgen Engler from
Die Krupps gives a powerful vocal performance on the title track, and ends up delivering one of the heavier songs on the album. It’s this willingness to tailor the songs to the strong points of each guest musician that keeps the album not only feeling fresh, but also allows it to maintain a high level of quality throughout.
An album with so many guest musicians always has the potential to sound like an unfocused mess, but that isn’t the case on
The New Resistance. This is because each track is based on a formula that includes high-energy beats, swirling layers of synth and gritty guitar riffs. The differences come due to the guest musicians providing their own spin as well as each track smoothly adapting itself to the musician’s strengths. The final product is an album that is really everything an industrial metal album should be – energetic, heavy, excellent electronic accompaniment and vocalists that are capable of carrying the whole thing to another level.
The New Resistance is that album and is an excellent kick-start to a genre that has been a little lacking lately.
