Hip Pop Stop

Posted by Todd B. (A) on April 21, 2008 at 02:23:52

Dark techno metal. End of the world electric guitars, synths melting their circuitry, and a banshee for a lead singer. Despite the album being 10 years old, the sound programming is so good, and the arrangements so sophisticated, that it still sounds ahead of it's time even now. Producer Tim Simenon and crew undoubtedly share credit for this, as this is the only Curve album they produced, and no other Curve album sounds quite like it.

"Recovery" would be a great introduction to the album if you've never heard it before. It's screaming drill of a guitar solo has one of the best distorted guitar sounds I've ever heard recorded. "Chinese Burn" maintains the intensity, with a pounding backbeat, skittering synths, and assorted whines, whistles, and scrapes continually dropping in and out. At this point, you'll need to give your ears a rest, so the mellow electronic noir of "Alligators Getting Up" would be in order. Yes, the title is goofy, but the song is not.

There's a couple of tracks I don't much care for, and they both were produced by the band without Simenon's help. "Dogbone" plods a bit in comparison to the rest of the album, but to be fair, it's otherwise fine. The title track, though, is a repetitive noise experiment that gets on my nerves.

The Napster page for the album is here: Curve - Come Clean

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Edits: 04/22/08