Braindance - Redemption

1. Refracture (4:44) 2. Resurrection (5:39) 3. Resurgence (5:11) 4. Return (5:28) 5. Relentless (8:03) 6. Reduction (3:05) 7. Resilience (5:00) 8. Remission (7:19) 9. Requiem (4:43) 10. Reflexion (6:21) 11. Redemption (8:30)

Total Running Time: 66:31

Let me tell you something about anticipation. It can be lethal. Especially when one's order of Braindance's Fear Itself gets lost in the mail and a new copy has not been sent yet because the record is registered as out of stock. Why lethal? Because I'm going to kill the bastard responsible for that when I find him (or her). A year or so ago, yours truly was scanning through some heavy metal websites when he came across a band description that tickled his fancy, the band in question being the aforementioned Braindance, and the description being so vague and encompassing that I just knew I'd hit the jackpot of the new and innovative.

Well, I was dead on target. With its second full-length album Redemption breaking all preconceived prejudices regarding the progressive metal subgenre and creating an incomparable approach that draws from the darkest strains of industrial, gothic, heavy, and electronic areas of music, the band has created an all-new style within progressive metal, lovingly named progressive darkwave by these masters of mayhem. In the meantime, do yourself a favor; believe the hype. This is bound to only get better with time.

Redemption is an album that hovers menacingly above the listener with edgy guitars, atmospherically foreboding keyboards, trancelike drum beats, and the resonating vocals of Sebastian Elliott, who recalls a moodier and more powerful David Gahan (Depeche Mode). On top of that are neurotic flashes of voice samples that give the album a definite cutting edge and accentuate the weird conceptual uniqueness that this band can claim to have created, which comes across as a kind of sonic equivalent of Oliver Stone. Intense, driving, freakishly innovative; truly the stuff to send conservative listeners into a nervous wreck.

Unfortunately, however, the multiple layers of samples and instruments that are piled upon each other with each passing track do reach a point of saturation that dampens the impact of the album. It is thus with the most intense tracks, such as "Remission," that the focus is left behind a bit and the band's unsettling talent for darkly majestic melodies is somewhat lost in the confusion. Just when one thinks that the buzz in undeserved, however, the glorious vocals of "Resurrection," "Redemption," and the evocative chorus of "Relentless" set the record straight in a catchiness that Depeche Mode would be envious of. Not for the weak of heart, but then again, as it goes, the meek shall not inherit the Earth.

-by Marcelo Silveyra

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