I’ve listened to Combichrist’s new album a number of times now, and I guess I’m getting bored with the style. It’s fine, but it doesn’t do anything new that Andy hasn’t done before. Onward and upward in the quest for loud and harsh, I suppose. The album occupies a middle ground between the dancy catchiness of Angelspit, and something much harsher like Memmaker or Mono-Amine. I guess I’m at a point where I prefer one or the other and don’t have as much tolerance for the mix.

Don’t get me wrong. If you’re a fan of Combichrist’s previous outings, you’ll still be pleased with We Are All Demons. Maybe this is me growing up.

This isn’t normally something I would mention, but I was so pleased with their setup that they deserve some praise. I wandered onto Tympanik Audio’s own site after looking for Autoclav1.1’s album Love No Longer Lives Here on Amazon and being discouraged by its high price. Three $5 albums and a few impulses later, I manage to end up with six releases for $62 shipped. The user interface is sleek, well designed and organized, and their integration with Paypal is pretty seamless, including a detailed itemized list of what you’re paying for. They only charged me a dollar per album for shipping, which turned out to be two bucks less than the postage label on the box claimed when it arrived at my doorstep.

Attn: other labels. Do what they do.

Also, the Autoclav1.1 rocks. First impression is that it’s definitely worth picking up.

I just noticed that within the last two months, the Metropolis Records catalog has become available for download on eMusic.com, an online music shop like iTunes that specializes in smaller indie labels. I’ve been a member on that site for a few years now, and Metropolis joining up now means that pretty much all of the major American distributors of darktronica music are now partners with eMusic.

This should not be construed as a plug for eMusic, because I think their business model is utterly out of touch with the state of the industry–you pay a flat rate on a monthly basis to download a fixed number of tracks (my plan is $15 for 50 songs a month). There’s no option to pay as you go, except by bumping up your plan with a “booster pack” of more songs; you can’t just buy a whole album, and you can’t subscribe for unlimited downloads. This means you often end up unable to download a whole album because you don’t have enough tracks left in your monthly quota, so you have to wait a few weeks to get the rest. However, they do have 30-second previews of any song in their inventory, and you can get some bang for your buck if you like a lot of bands that tend to put out 10+ minute songs. All in all, they have a place in the marketplace, but it’s a mixed bag.

Bottom line is, it’s a good source for stuff that’s hard to find from other online shops, and now Metropolis Records is on there as well.

North American readers may be unfamiliar with the Deutsch Alternative Charts, but darktronica music is alive and well in Europe, and the DAC is the best chart (akin to the American Billboard charts) rating its sales and radio play. A few metal and rock releases are counted on the DAC–such as Metallica’s Death Magnetic–and power noise more extreme than what typically is profiled on this site also qualifies. For the most part, though, the Deutsch ratings are a great way to discover some artists and albums that otherwise don’t get much exposure in the US.

Earlier this month, the DAC released their list of the Top 50 Albums of 2008 and the Top 100 Singles of 2008. Congratulations to Andreas Davids of Xotox for producing the highest-ranked non-compilation album of the year. Out of Line also deserves recognition for mopping the floor with other labels by releasing 3 of the top 10 albums, and 10 of the top 50.

The full listing of the Top 50 DAC Albums of 2008, as well as the Top 100 Singles list, is available here.

With today’s release of Combichrist’s new album, Today We Are All Demons, I thought it would be nice to collect some other upcoming release dates for major darktronica artists.

Soman - Sound Pressure 2.0 - Jan 27
Sirenia - The 13th Floor - Jan 28
Seabound - When Black Beats Blue - Feb 3
Assemblage 23 - Early, Rare & Unreleased Volume 2 - Feb 10
Gary Numan - Replicas (Live DVD) - Feb 16
Leaves’ Eyes - We Came With The Northern Winds - Feb 27
Diary Of Dreams - Album 9 (working title) - Mar 13
KMFDM - Blitz - Mar 24
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Death Threat - Apr 14
XP8 - Drop The Mask - June __

2008 was a great year for darktronica, and especially aggrotech, making it tough to narrow down only ten albums to honor. Starting with a short list of nearly 25 excellent releases, these are the 10 left standing when the dust settled. A few others that narrowly missed the final cut are Boole’s The Vital Few, Bella Morte’s Beautiful Death, Virgin Black’s Requiem - Fortissimo, and FGFC820’s Law And Ordnance. It’s clear that I need to break out aggrotech or terror EBM as genres distinct from industrial dance to keep up with the growing diversity of bands being lumped together in the current industrial dance category.

This year was pretty hectic for me, encompassing two cross-country moves within ten months and a return to grad school. As a result, I’ve missed out on a lot of music outside of the darktronica sphere and will be playing catch up for quite some time. A few notable albums I really enjoyed, however, are Saturdays = Youth by French dance duo M83, Opeth’s Watershed, Cross by Justice (also a French electronic dance duo), and Black Snow by German hip-hop producers The Snowgoons.

As posted on her Myspace page, Erica Dunham (Unter Null) suffered a house fire last night, losing her entire studio–including an entire album’s worth of material–and many of her other personal effects. In the spirit of the holidays and the musical community we all belong to, I’m encouraging all of you to help her rebuild in any way you are able.

For those who would like to make a donation of money or gear, her email and paypal addresses are listed in the Myspace posting listed above. Even if you are unable to contribute, please help spread the word that Erica is dealing with a tremendous loss right now and could use as many friends as she can get.

A new album review, for Through The Shadows by Italian band The Spiritual Bat, has been posted over on the review page. Follow the link for the full review, or just get the text below:

Through The Shadows is the debut of Dario Passamonti’s newest project, The Spiritual Bat, an evolution of his past work with Rosy Garrì in Spiritual Bats. The album proves that old-school gothic rock is not dead, it just moved to Italy.

The bookends of the album, “Through The Shadows” and “Sogno Tribale,” both bring the Bauhaus classic “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” sharply to mind, and it’s not a bad starting point for comparison. Their tone is highly evocative of the early post-punk goth era, featuring highly prominent basslines and rock drum beats overlaid with piercing vocals.

Speaking of vocals, Rosy’s tone and voice are a near-clone of Nocturne’s Lacey Conner, but with a bit more versatility and less of a metal edge. Her delivery is more akin to Elizabeth Fraser (of Cocteau Twins fame) in her more coherent moments, and it really adds a lot to the authentic old-school feel of the album. Through The Shadows was originally conceived as an instrumental work, but the extra effort dedicated to the lyrics and vocals has paid off well.

Many songs are still instrumental, however, and in many ways they are the best tracks of all. Bruno Lombardi, from the Italian National RAI Orchestra, has contributed his mastery of the flute to four compositions: “Wandering On Cobble Hills,” “Prague,” “Primordial Call,” and “Twins.” The first two are particularly gorgeous and must be heard to believe; there are a number of gothic bands who employ “classical” instruments to good effect, but none match Maestro Lombardi’s skill and creativity. His playful riffs add an upbeat fun that keep this old-school album from being the same old Siouxsie retread we’ve all heard so many times before.

Through The Shadow’s lone weakness is that occasionally, when one element of a song is really stealing the show, everything else tends to sit back and watch. This is most evident on “Prague,” where the flute is absolutely breathtaking, and the synth line is simple though effective, but the drums are mostly relegated to a canned loop. It would have been a great touch to add some native percussion or something else other than the standard kit.

The Spiritual Bat has taken a classic style that’s been posed to death, and given it a breath of desperately needed fresh air.

Over the last month, I’ve been systematically going through every band’s information to make sure everything is up to date, particularly with Myspace links and new releases. Over 150 new band photos have been added, and a lot of out-of-date links have been updated. That’s why you’ll notice that not as many new bands have been added recently.

I also just upgraded the news engine from WordPress 2.1 to 2.6. The site uses a number of custom functions beyond just the visual theme, and I believe it’s all been migrated over now, but if you notice any strange errors, please comment here to let me know. Thanks!

A review of Da5id Din’s latest release, Informatik’s Beyond, is now available in the Reviews section here. The album just came out in September, so it’s still pretty fresh. This is not your typical Informatik album, but it’s a great collection of tunes. Not that I drive much in Santa Monica, but it hasn’t left my car’s CD player since getting it three weeks ago.

Anyway, read more here.