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Having witnessed the aural anesthesia of Vaiping live once before, it was with beastliness as a forethought and grim vexation that I agreed to review their sophmore release.
I found them insipid live. Four remarkably amicable, pleasant chaps from the rainy dregs of Stavanger arrived fresh-faced and lucid to display their talents to the seven or eight people gathered at Mono in hushed revery. The venue lights dimmed, the stage lights bathed their ashen features in ribbons of blue/red/white. A glittering backdrop shedding its silver slivers anytime a mere gust passed through the room.
Then the music started and the veil came crashing down like a reckless hangover.
The official press-release name-drops bands which Vaiping are likened to on a (seemingly) more than regular basis. Band such as Kraftwerk, Ulver, Massive Attack, Depeche Mode.
Namedropping such stalwarts of the electronic/noise underground/overground does little to improve the chances of a record suffering from the get-go. If they had chosen some bands that didn’t exert such influence, command such respect, then perhaps weak similarities could be garnered. Unfortunately, they have managed to castrate themselves from the very source they claim their inspiration stemmed from.
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t awful music… it’s just very very average. What it lacks is anything to propel it to within a yardstick of the bands’ contemporaries. A mish-mash of dodgy 80s german synth bands, a pinch of post-rock, a sprinkle of electronic buggery… to be honest it sounds like the intro to a Rammstein song more often than not, something that does not deserve accolades in bronze, silver or gold.
Vocals constantly clothed in effects that are used incessantly end up falling flat in their repetition. Recurrent tracks with a rather steady, boring drumbeat… similar tempos/sounds in almost all the songs, reminiscent of a band still trying to comprehend their sound and lacking the ideas or balls to take it further, onto the next step of mediocrity. A band stuck in a moment, a moment worth possibly stepping out of. For their sake, and ours.
One dimensional humdrum.
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