Max Dmyz - Muthablud

Would Europe be the new home of industrial rock? As the american icons of the genre fade or slide to different styles, new blood is appearing on the old continent and getting some success (see Tanzwut walking the path of Rammstein). Well, the inverse move is happening for electro / EBM so I guess it's not surprising to see how fans from Europe are beginning to release stuff as their americans hero stop.

This to say that Max Dmyz, a band founded by a former member of the British metal band Blood Simple could be shortly described as an industrial rock CD: angry guitars, electronic drummings, distorted voices, samples, everything here meets the old recipe created by Ministry & co.But this "Muthablud" also contains some other elements, like some gothic / dark elements, mostly on the percussions (why is it that all goth bands from the UK have the same kind of beat, repetitive and old-school sounding?). Then, the metal aggression is still well present here, most of all on the title track and on "This is DIS (dirty)". Then, the singer has tried to inject in his vocals some hip hop elements, on "Bastard God" (probably the tracks that works the best here). It doesn't get as rap-like as SMP, but it's still something you don't hear everyday from somebody coming out of a metal band.

The two remixes that closes the CDR don't bring anything really new to the songs. It's pretty well done but, overall, the compositions and sounds are still more or less at the level of a demo's. But energy is here, and Max Dmyz could please a lot headbanging industrial rock fan with slighlty more efficient songs and better, more defined, sonorities. Nicolas, December 21, 1999