Barcode E-zine: The Cursed Species
Zak Roberts presents his second full-length album here, following on from his noisy debut, Paradise. This time, Roberts concentrates more on breakbeats, with each track providing kicking beats that surround themselves in throbbing cyber bass lines, crunched up samples and power keyboards. Roberts tries his best to vary the themes within his strict, break-driven routines, How To Kill People And Get Away With It has a live percussive feel, whilst the following Eve Ill is a bewildering chowder of bristling loops and complex programmed sounds. This is a man who is obviously in love with digging into the pit of his programming capabilities. The dark, echoey broodiness of Cursed Species predictably sees the album flirt with the sensibilities of the Industrial music scene, but it’s thankfully varied enough to withstand the plagiarisms attached to that genre, introducing new elements that at least give it a sense of originality, even though Roberts occasionally loses himself in a self-indulgent haze of manic programming; I’m not sure he ever stops to consider a prospective audience, which is usually a good sign. Elsewhwere, the madcap, rhythmic flurries of Graceless, when merged with the barely-comprehensible vocal samples that menacingly envelope it, are a particular highlight, whilst the closing A Death Worth Re-Living is the furious sound of machine grinding machine into the dust; authentically destructive in a Terminator soundtrack kind of way. I wouldn’t go overboard, but The Cursed Species is definitely an album that will appeal to the user-friendly powernoise enthusiast that might be looking for something a little more leftfield.
