Ice Ages : "Coma"

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Austrian electronic project offers a dark dramatic take on electronic music. It reminds me of a less emotive VNV Nation, at times. The droning machine-like churn that keeps the opening track in motion is stark but also rather flat in terms of dynamics. On the second song, the vocals are more sung to provide a little more flow, though the backing instrumentation is giving the vocals more room to breathe they are drifting in a more symphonic direction. "Self Exiled" is a more effective song for what they do as it carries more groove. Up to this point, they were presenting pleasing sounds but here they all fall together. In terms of arrangements, the songs begin to sprawl out more in eight-minute songs.

Some of the fat can be trimmed like the minute-long build-up into "Euthanasia". This song drones along an ethereal melody that is being hammered by more machine-like beats.  The middle section of this song could have stood to have been edited down. "Fatal Breath" finds the vocals in a more robotic cadence.This song takes a while to get going. It is not until three minutes in that feels like any progress has been made,It ebbs and flows off a theme, but the vocals chant and never hook you in with anything that makes you invested in the song.

"Idol" is more rhythmic. There is less orchestration to bog it down. The vocals which are this project's weak spot, tend to follow a similar pattern to what they have already done earlier in the album. This begins to make all the songs feel the same, as well as just generally start to bore me, Much like the previous song it works over variations of the established theme. There is more of an 80s pulse to "Promising Demise". The beat is pretty much your typical early industrial fare but with better production value. It takes two minutes for the vocals to appear and even then they do not really remain all that present until another minute passes. Once again there is a lack of any form of vocal hook.

This project would work really well at making music for video games, as it is more about a cinematic tone of sound than catchy songs, This can be felt in the eight-and-a-half-minute closing song. It is not until midway into this song that it really takes a noticeable turn. The vocals remain an obligatory exclamation. I will give this a 7.5, it works in terms of creating a sound but does not translate into songs you will be drawn back into.