Barbarossa

Alternative Press - 3 (out of 5) - "...[an] effective mesh of Motorhead and Metallica with [a] Nitzer Ebb-like cyber-throb..." Melody Maker - "...conceivably the sound of all that ever mattered. It's got rhythm, it's got velocity, it's got discipline, it's got a voice (so forceful, you can only catch the shreds of its slipstream) that impossibly asks for more....But you'd probably just pass it off as `industrial'..."

Finally, Cubanate puts it all together near perfectly, creating 1996's best industrial album by a mile. Relentlessly focusing on creating amazing, club-friendly material while trying a number of different approaches throughout, the band sound ready to destroy the world as brutally as possible, while making you dance madly the whole time. Though the opening "Vortech I" sounds like fairly typical Cubanate, the next track, the title song itself, evolves into a heavy duty fusion between feedback/industrial beat power and techno speed rush builds and breaks; when Heal suddenly roars "Let's go to work!" during a split-second pause in the music, it all connects. Other numbers like "Exultation" and "Come Alive" aim for similar but thankfully not exact replications of such powerful musical combinations, while songs like "Joy" and "The Musclemen" grapple with unexpected, shuddering percussion patterns for their equally solid effect. Heal's vocals even show hints of subtlety more than once -- definitely a new path! -- while a number of lyrics sound like he's trying to move beyond the usual dominance/submission/power politics take on things which the genre prefers. The brooding, snaky drive of closing song "Lord of the Flies" showcases the band's abilities well, not least because it's a song which couldn't have been recorded by the band in earlier days -- a sure sign of its increasing abilities. ~ Ned Raggett|