Dismantled - Breed to Death

With some bands my expectations are high, with others my expectations low. I went into this new Dismantled EP with pretty low expectations, to be honest. Although I know some people think their material is awesome, I have found that my own opinion is quite the opposite. This opinion allowed me to listen their latest release, a EP entitled Breed To Death without expecting much, and thus to be pleasantly surprised. About half the tracks are fairly good.

Once you overlook the painful electroclash falsetto title track, the rest of this remix EP is pretty good, with the stand out tracks being remixes of The Swarm by Haujobb and Wumpscut.

Hold on! Suddenly I run headfirst into their cover of Paula Abdul's Straight Up. This track is completely unnecessary. Unnecessarily on this CD and unnecessarily existing in the first place. Is there an attempt to be kitsch or does Dismantled really have a affinity for this track? Its hard to tell and even harder to care. In fact, I'll say no more because I'm trying to forget I even heard it.

Psyclon Nine pull off a good mix of the title track, altering the vocals to limit that falsetto business. It's only right to mention that I hate falsetto in all its forms and manifestations. Falsetto fans can ignore my anti-falsetto remarks and negativity (perhaps these fans of Dismantled are also falsetto fans).

To sum up: I'll give Gary Zion some credit for attempting to do something new with vocals within the Industrial genre. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work for me.

Squid @ April 2006