Review Summary: One of my favorite, and one of the most upsettingly underrated, gothic electronica albums ever. Half of the songs are instantly catchy and the vocalist is unbelievable.
When I first came onto Sputnik, one of the first things I did was check the ratings to all of Imaginarius albums. Imagine my sadness when I realized only a few people had voted and not a single review had been written. Well, here is the first one, and hopefully not the last for this trio. Imaginarius formed in Billings Montana but quickly moved to Hollywood after their debut. Since, the band has released six albums and an additional cover album.
Because there are so few amounts of votes, I’m assuming this site is uneducated in Imaginarius. Well, I’m your teacher so pull up a chair and be ready to be enlightened. Claiming to be inspired by bands like Garbage, Flyleaf, Gorillaz, Depeche Mode, Rush, Evanescence, Imaginarius is a very nice blend of all of the above bands in an honest and original fashion. At first, the band was very strictly a electronic group with an occasional guitar solo and all of the songs were about sex. Since then, the band has evolved into adding actual rock-sounding drums and guitar-driven riffs while still keeping their electronica pop sound with their next two albums. For whatever reason, Imaginarius decided to return to their humble roots with a Paranoia Incorporated, bringing back most of the trademarks of their debut album, Exit.
The vocalist is a female, the gorgeous Nikki Agnor, who has a crystal clear voicebox capable of hitting several hard keys. She sounds very similar to the vocalist of Evanescence, in fact she claims to have done uncredited backing vocals for Evanescence debut. She doesn’t shake at all, she’s just takes control of your ears and makes iffy songs tolerable. She is part of the reason as for why this album just turned out so well.
Every song on Paranoia Incorporated has at least one great moment, and several of the songs are solid 5/5 tracks. These include Queen With A Hollow Heart, Suicide Bride, Skin, My Bags Are Packed Lets Go, and Love Will Be The Death Of Me. Queen With A Hollow Heart is one of my favorite tracks ever. It sounds like something you’d hear in your head when you first hold hands with the girl you love. Suicide Bride is extremely catchy and get stuck in your head as soon as the chorus begins, the way the snare marches like a little drummer boy is so sick. Strip! is very aggressive and has a heavy riff made of electronic fuzz. It would be cool to see a metal band cover that song because the riff totally works. The album opens with Straight From Heaven, which is a gorgeous opening track, although it is kinda slow. The track closes with the even more gorgeous Love Will Be The Death Of Me.
So, what’s the problem? The lyrics are, for at least half of the time, very concerning, and on at least two or three tracks they are just flat out atrocious. This is partly due to the stark clearness of Nikki’s lovely voice. With genres like metal or screamo, or even grunge, the lyrics might be bad in some songs but the vocals sound like slurred sounds and you cant make out a single thing. Here, every word is crystal clear and right in front. The common theme here is sex, and it’s so obvious that it becomes cringy. Tracks like Strip! suffer because of this. It goes “I’ll be the nurse at your bedside in a tight white uniform, now open wide cuz I’ll kiss you like you’ve never been kissed before. I’ll be the pirate on your ship, my booty is worth more than gold, now lets walk the plank and make love on a sandy cove. Lets play a game, you can be on top of me, lets take all our clothes off and strip for you!” Seriously, you read that correctly. This Is like 4th grade level material about porn despite not knowing how babies are even made. Not gord man, not gord. Or maybe the track Love Will Be The Death Of Me, which although the song is amazing, the lyrics are about a guy who transforms into a girl and falls in love with another guy…yah…which brings me to our next point.
One thing I’d like to add is a note about the guitarist, a man known for two separate famous identities that you may know both. One guitar and backing vocals is Eric Dapkewicz, who you may know as the Oscar-nominated editor for a lot of Dreamwork’s animated films, like Monsters Vs Aliens, How To Train Your Dragon 1 and 2, Flushed Away, Prince Of Egypt, and most of the others, as well as the director and writer for the low-budget yet Sundance-praised sci-fi horror Paradox Alice. There’s a chance you are very familiar with his work or you have no clue who he is. Meanwhile, if I say the guitarist and backing vocalist is Makodap, you might go “oh yah, I know that guy!” while others may be lost. MakoDap is a Youtube personality who makes videos about guys transforming into girls and having sex with guys immediately afterwards and loving it. Yah, pretty much all of his videos are the same, whether or not they be animated comics or live action shorts. Starts out with a guy down on his luck who turns into a girl American Werewolf In London style, so by that I mean he doesn’t just POOF into a chick, he falls in pain and begins growing big boobs and a fat butt over like a minute. Then he/she examines him/herself, says something like “ohhh I feel so good and warm” with a sly grin and runs off to immediately have sex with a friend who was just moments ago one of his bros and, of course, he/she yells “I love it!” and says she never wants to be a guy again. He’s done videos of the Powerpuff girls, Tron legacy, Alice in Wonderland, Indiana jones, freaking Spiderman and Harry Potter, even Star Wars, in which the emperor transforms a young sith officer into a hot babe with his force powers and then the sith guy has sex with Vader and later Luke Skywalker. If you are into that, his videos serve as very good porn without the nudity. But you know what always plays in the background of those videos? Imaginarius! He also has a very popular vlog upload series in which he defends wanting to become a 10/10 chick and why he isn’t gay or confused. So yah check out his work, either as an editor or director, or as a youtube TF’er, or as a musician. He has a buttload of backing vocals on this album so you’ll hear him a lot.
Unfortunately, most of the songs on this album can only be found FOR FREE as the backing music for Makodap’s man-to-hot babe porn fantasy videos, but if you just play the video and pull something else up or turn off the monitor, you should be in good hands and you’ll find yourself loving the music. Or maybe you like it, I mean, most of his cartoons are very well drawn and the newer ones with the sound effects put you in the location of the video. If you are willing to spend some money, all 7 of Imaginarius albums are on iTunes, Rhapsody, and Myspace Music. I say it’s worth the purchase though, especially since Rhapsody is just a monthly fee and you can buy anything you want and only have to pay $0.99 cent per month.
