Search - Informatik :: Syntax

Boston-based industrialists Informätik follow up their competent (if somewhat derivative) debut with essentially more of the same. It's good, straight-ahead electro, but it doesn't take many risks, preferring to remain well within the barbed-wire fence that separates much of the industrial dance music populace from all the other sampler-and-drum-machine-toting hordes. Vocalist Da5id Din's heavily processed vocals growl about war, loneliness, and human suffering, but emotion is lacking, and there aren't enough original musical ideas to catapult Syntax out of the overcrowded prison yard of industrial mediocrity. Still, it has its moments: "Nil" sports a nifty synth line (shades of Skinny Puppy's "Testure"), and "Retrogradation" piles the atmospherics neatly atop menacing, slow-moving percussion. More of this, and parole is definitely within Informätik's reach. --Steve Landau