Satellites was the breaking point for me, so self-referential and so few new songs after years and years of delays. His perfectionist tendencies get in the way so many damn times

I need to recheck this but I do love Embracing Entropy, even if the “Celldweller” feature is ridiculous

Album Rating: 4.0

Satellites is astonishingly weak for a Celldweller album, which is a shame considering it’s his heaviest - only 8 songs and nearly all of them are 2 minutes longer than they needed to be. It’s really self-indulgent.

My rev of the album was a little biased because I was still influenced by the whole “Stahli and Klay fallout” drama posting, but it still doesn’t hold up on its own merits. My Disintegration is a jam, but every time I try to listen to Baptized in Fire and hear Klay scream “the end of this empire”, I just roll my damn eyes

I still think End of an Empire is his best work as Celldweller, tied with Circle of Dust for his best work period

Album Rating: 4.0

At the time I felt Wish Upon a Blackstar was his best - but End of an Empire has aged exceptionally well.

The Bret / Klay fallout sucked and definitely had some bearing on the lyrics of Satellites, which sadly reflects how easily Klayton allows real life bad blood to influence his creative efforts... and not in a good way.

Album Rating: 4.0

So... I guess Klayton's plan is to just re-release the whole album as single edits instead of any new material?

I guess so. Which feels ridiculous and moneygrubbing, even by Klay's standards. Is there even any difference between the single edits and the album ones?

Edit: Checked the song lengths, they do seem shorter. Still headscratching though

Oh my god, they're also double billed as singles from Circle of Dust AND Celldweller, so his artist pages are now just flooded with Circle of Dust single edits

Album Rating: 4.0

Yeah he did the same thing with Scandroid, retagged all the Spotify credits as both Scandroid and Celldweller.

Album Rating: 4.0

"Is there even any difference between the single edits and the album ones?"

From what I've heard, the single edit mostly cuts out/down the "industrial metal spoken word samples" from old 50s sci-fi movies or whatever.

I do kinda get that, it's a bit better for discoverability since Klay has so many different projects, but it also buries all of his stuff at the same time

Those samples were practically the only thing separating Machines from Celldweller stuff though, so...

Album Rating: 4.0

Yeah a CoD album without the samples is basically 'Satellites'... and 'Satellites' was somehow simultaneously one of the heaviest, and yet also one of the most tedious things Klayton has released in a good long while.

I've got beef with Satellites, because why tf did we have to wait so long for such an underwhelming album? Only song I still listen to from it is My Disintegration

Album Rating: 4.0

There's so much recycling on 'Satellites' of the chorus repeating over and over just to extend songs into the 5-6 minute range, virtually every song on that album could have easily been trimmed by 60-120 seconds and you'd barely notice.

It's such a far cry from the creative spirit he poured into End of the Empire.

End of an Empire holds up shockingly well. Still super engaging through and through. Hell, even Machines had more creativity in its songwriting

Album Rating: 4.0

Christ, the new single edit of 'Neophyte' completely butchers the pacing of the entire song. Everything is so rushed and scrambled.

Is this really how Klayton is spending his time these days?

Album Rating: 4.0

New Circle of Dust track just dropped on Spotify, and man I hate to say it but it doesn't sound amazing.

The guitars are great, but the vocals are so over compressed and buried in the mix you can barely hear him sometimes.