Review Summary: What would seem like a miraculous blend of mind-bending genres quickly fizzles into generic dubstep loops and repetitive palm muted riffing.
Every now and then someone has the balls to take two genres and combine them, and the French djentleman known as The Algorithm is one of them. Sometimes, it actually works well (Skindred), but unfortunately, this album feels more like a forced breeding in a laboratory.
After the first listen all seems right in the universe, the perfect blend of the most abrasive genre in electronic music (dubstep) and its metal equivalent (Djent) has been created and your acid trips now have a new soundtrack. However upon a couple more critical listens some glaring flaws stand out.
The Algorithm tread into unknown waters with his work, but the whole album feels a bit conservative and emotionless. There is good music in this EP, and dubstep fans and metalheads alike would surely at least humor critics and say it's worth a listen. The dubstep is standard, but more along the DnB lines than the dirty, grinding Boregore-esque dubstep variety. The downtuned, palm muted guitar riffing also known as djent is also thrown around quite well, although he's no Bulb, it's clear he is a competent guitarist. It's blended flawlessly as well, and at no point is there a moment where the two sounds are fighting each other. That being said, this is not a djent album reminiscent any of Cloudkicker's work, but rather, a dubstep tracklist with some djenty influences.
It's makes for an enjoyable listen the first time or two. After that it becomes stale and apparent that it's just generic dubstep with very average djenting added into the mix. In Kernel part 1 something sounding like what I would assume to be Eminem flows into a rap verse behind the dubby djent, and honestly, this is the most interesting point in the album beyond it's general premise.
It's hard to hate on an artist who is essentially breaking ground in a new genre(s) but if you take away the djent, you're left with stale and predictable dusbtep. Take away the dubstep, and you have repetitive palm muted riffing. It's worth listening to for sure, but at the end of the day its obvious that more substance and experimentation needs to be added to future albums to make the sound consistently interesting after more than one listen.
Pro's:
Something new and original
Certainly interesting
Solid mxing
Con's
Becomes repetitive and stale after a few listens
Nothing special, just a neat genre-combo
There's tons of promise here, but this album will be no benchmark when looked back on.
