Aborym : "Shifting Negative"

The album title might refer to the direction the Italian band wanted the reviews for this album to go in. I love the post-industrial rock from the 90s. As cheesy as bands like God Lives Underwater got, I still liked it at the time, so when I hear something like this it re-kindles those memories. The problem here is you might remember these guys as being a black metal band. You might remember them being more on the experimental side. This album is not black metal...at all. So while I can appreciate the groove and textures in the opening song, if you are attached to what thee guys used to sound like then you are going to have a reaction not unlike the one had by many when the last Morbid Angel came out.

There is a Nine Inch Nails like sound to the piano sprinkled into "Precarious" , that might remind you of "Something I can Never Have" . The vocals are hushed almost in a whisper. This seems like it would have fir better later in the album as it is a little too atmospheric and kinda kills the chance to build momentum. "Decadence in a Nutshell" sounds like it should have been on Alice Cooper's "Brutal Planet " album. The first glimpse of harsher vocals crops up after this , but comes across more like Strapping Young Lad. It amounts to a pretty decent song , not one I would keep on constant replay, but I paid attention when I heard it.

There is an odd marriage of blast beats and the current level of Nine Inch Nails worship on "Slipping Through the Cracks", but some how avoids sounding like total nu-metal. "You Can't Handle the Truth" has a slower more powerful intro. It feels more like a Ministry song putting us back in the zip code of actual industrial. There was more thought put into the arrangement of "For a Better Past" , it seemed like a pretty decent balance of these sometimes contrasting elements. There is more of that pop like expand and contract dynamic that built it's bandwagon off of "the Downward Spiral" in the 90s on "Tragedies" which doesn't wow me , but doesn't suck either. I also like how things get darker on "Going Places", but chances are if you do not like solo  Rob Zombie you are not going to like this either. It closes with "Big H" which is a little more rock n roll. Some of the winks to Nine Inch Nails in the closing moments of this song are pretty obvious, but there are worse ways to go. I'll give this album an 8 as it is a fitting tribute to an era of music I love and if you are going to decide to transition out of black metal into something more mainstream this is the way to do it.