SAMHAIN

A CD that comes in a nice packaging always draws a bit more attention than the ordinary plastic jewel case. For some reason a digi-pack CD always feels a bit more classy to me, and when they took the effort to stick a rusty die cut metal plate on as front cover I cannot resist shoving it in my laptop CD player. And after a few seconds I already knew I would regret taking the time to listen to this album. Noise Dark electro reminiscent to the likes of Mentallo & The Fixer, X-marks the Pedwalk and maybe even some flirts of Suicide Commando, Frontline Assembly and Skinny Puppy. So I know that I got your attention with this namedropping but I like to make clear I never had the feeling listening to one of the one-thousand copycats of the aforementioned bands. Maybe I'm just in a good mood but while listing further on this album I realise it has been a while since I enjoyed listening to a complete album that is not just a collection of ideas and tracks but songs that make the album feel like a whole piece of work/art. Ok, distorted vocals are not new in this genre but Samhain succeeds to not over do them and make them blend into the tracks very well. Not all tracks are stomping dancefloor tracks but songs like the stomping 'The Hole/Stanford Experiment' or the more harsher sounding 'Philadelphia' will certainly pop-up during my future DJ sets! Don't fear the experiment! Check Samhain out!

Fred GADGET
10/06/2022