“Animatronic” is bombastic and silly, a combination that has caused some heads to explode in the black metal scene. A BM fatwa was issued after the NWOBHM influenced, keyboard slathered “space metal” of “Nexus Polaris.” But the Kovenant, never passing up free publicity, continued to agitate with the industrial metal outrageousness of “Animatronic,” the most hilariously overwrought album of 1999. The beats are more disco than metal, guitars are heavy and simple, growls are blasé, and the lyrics range from fascist to nihilistic (all satire of course). It sounds extreme, but is pop at heart, with bold dance hooks and space-age epic metal riffs. The lyrics, which throw around Nietzschean phraseology like “will to power,” gravitate toward science fiction satire, with some post-human conjecture and “big ideas” about the end of religion and the collapse of human society. Big surprise, millennialism was riding high in 1999, the year of its release. Thoughtful despite being disposable, “Animatronic” revels in a kind of dancehall nihilism, EBM disaffection suffused with metal pomposity. It sounds like music you’d hear in shopping malls of the shiny dystopian future: violent, simple, kind of stupid, and outrageously entertaining.
– James Slone
VITALS:
Release: 1999
Label: Nuclear Blast
Avantgenre: Millenial Industrial Dance Metal
Duration: 51:07
Origin: Norway
Official site: None
Review online since: 05.08.2007 / 02:36:34
TRACKLIST:
01 – Mirrors Paradise
02 – New World Order
03 – Mannequin
04 – Sindrome
05 – Jihad
06 – The Human Abstract
07 – Prophecies Of Fire
08 – In The Name Of The Future
09 – Spaceman
10 – The Birth Of Tragedy
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