When others were just learning the synthwave genre, Perturbator had already mastered the trade in 2012. I came late to Perturbator/synthwave bandwagon, having only listened Carpenter Brut for years.
Perturbator’s 2017 34 minute EP New Model is a different sound than the norm, darker, more riff oriented approach. If one can say riffs about electronic music. Not surprisingly, the main man behind Perturbator, James Kent, has background in metal, having been a guitarist in multiple black metal bands before Perturbator era.
I’m a big fan of the dark dystopia atmosphere, it supports the themes a lot better than the regular hard-hitting fast and bright 80s synthwave sound that most artists are doing. Problem is, the compositions are slightly jarred. I mean, the sections don’t always flow as smoothly as they should. And when they do, there could be more content.
Take Tainted Empire as an example, it seems to be a collection of interval sections that pop up and then go away. You’d think the great melodic part from 2-3 minutes is the beef but then the last minutes are some mech-walking like slow and doomy droning. The sung single track Vantablack almost hits the mark, but in the end is a bit of a 8/10 sci-fi movie with a brilliant start. Enjoyable, but not as good as it could have been.
Corrupted By Design has extreme head-banging groove as an intro and main theme, but the 5 minute composition doesn’t feature much else of note. The beginning track Birth of a New Model is an excellent entity and the last track God Complex, takes the groove, turns the rhythm knobs, adds some sky-soaring clean synths. A really fucking excellent 8.5 minute tough as nails entity where even the few minutes of ambient in the midst are a support column.
The new model has a lot of promise but the main functions are still a tad bit buggy. Due to bugs the user experience is sometimes frustrating but in the end New Model does the job. There’s been a vast amount of innovations that have never been taken further after the semi-successful first model. One can only hope Perturbator keeps fine-tuning and developing the sound and the next version is the definitive 2.0 Perturbator.
8/10
My face when I was listening to a random rather praised American metal band that turns out sounding a lot like a mixture of Wintersun, Insomnium, Ensiferum and Kalmah. And they do this Finnish melodeath thing supremely fucking well. Every other year I lose my hope on ever finding really good melodeath an
If you don’t like bright complex electronic music, you might still dig this crazy Irish guy. Must be a love it or hate it artist. As a very raw definition one could say Iglooghost combines IDM, trip-hop / wonky, breakcore, dubstep and bright and fucked up vocal sounds. It has also been called a maximalist album which fits really well as there’s a shit ton of stuff happening.
Finnish sludgepulverizing. Very hypnotic, mostly based on gigantic riffs, but Radien also flourishes in good spareful use of melodies. Even if you don’t speak Finnish, this is a supreme release. Also free to download from 
I am not as taken aback with Leather Teeth, as I’d like to. I expected it to be a full time heavy as shit electronic retrowave joyblast like Trilogy but… It is good but the ridiculously strong melodic themes are not as apparent as on Trilogy. On some tracks like the title track everything sticks together like it should. Bringing in two great vocalists in Ulver’s Kristoffer Rygg and Beastmilk/Grave Pleasures Mat McNerney also helps the case.
Like Music To Your Ears 