Bursting out of Southampton and Salisbury, with the desire to beat you over the head with their synths, is Hybrid 6.0. With the drum machine pushing out the beats they don’t plan on taking any prisoners, just leaving casualties. With their primary weapon their debut album “Silent Destruction”.
Opening the album is “Desired Effect” possibly one of the strongest tracks on the album, and has a pounding beat and nestles you into an EBM mindset. Next up is “Anger” which is a great live number with its distorted guitars and pounding beat. The electronic beats continue with “Alice” which has an almost dub-step sound, to its almost cyber-punk run-down of a certain fictional Alice who experienced some mind altering events, whilst “Teardrop Butterfly” as more standard club beat, but maintains the aggressive stance with it’s sample. This however is offset with “Mind Over Matter” which has a sound more akin to the 80’s, and is followed by “Waiting”, which backs up that 80’s feel, which in part is due to it being an interesting cover/re-working that takes heavily from a certain “In The Air Tonight”, whilst being heavily re-engineered along with Hybrid 6’s own lyrics. One of the more dance floor friendly tracks is “He Bleeds Ferrari Red”. Closing the album is “The Music Drug” which has a slight change in direction with a smoother softer close to the album. A slightly friendlier track, that betrays some of the earlier aggression, and one of the favourites for this listener.
The growing niche market of EBM and alternative club can be a hard scene to break into. Those acts that do well do very well, whilst there are a lot of bands that hardly get to see the light of day. This is a strong start sitting somewhere between aggro-tech, EBM, and industrial. The horror themed samples providing a genre pre-requisite backdrop, edgey sound, electric guitar, and aggressive lyrics give you no doubt where they are are heading. Not too mention the age warning on the sleeve. I can hear a number of influences from a range of acts, ranging from dance floor friendly to aggressive, and this does feel a little confused at times, and there is a unpolished edge to the sound which may put a few people off. This may or may not be intentional, but it adds to the rough and ready feel which suites industrial/EBM genre. The album has some great tracks, and a pre-turn of the century feel to it. If I had to criticise the album it would be the vocals need to be a little more dominant, but this does not lessen the impact.
“Silent Destruction” is available from their web-site for £6.
Line Up
Madam Mayhem – Vocals/Keys
Opkar – Keys/Synths
Jude 1:8 – Guitar
Steve Erida – Vocals/Programming
Tracklisting
01. Rose Coloured Nightmares
02. Desired Effect
03. Anger
04. Alice
05. The Infected
06. Teardrop Butterfly
07. Cut Up Angel
08. Mind Over Matter
09. Waiting
10. He Bleeds Ferrari Red
11. Toy
12. The Music Drug
Links
http://hybridsix.com/
https://www.facebook.com/hybridsix
Words by Jon.
