Mentallo & The Fixer - Music From The Eather

Mentallo & The Fixer (referencing two Marvel comics characters), is an Electro-Industrial band that formed in 1992, as two brothers from Texas, Gary and Dwayne Dassing, began experimenting with synthesizers and samples, signing with Simbiose Records. After continuing to release avant garde music over the years with Zoth Ommog and eventually landing home at Metropolis Records in 1995, Dwayne left Mentallo & The Fixer in 1999, and Gary has been continuing his musical journey ever since. He has released 13 albums, numerous singles and EPs, and has appeared on countless compilations over the years.

After a five year hiatus since his last album was released, and now releasing albums on the Belgium label Alfa-Matrix (a trademark for innovative electronic music), Gary returns with his new 2 CD release, 'Music From The Eather.' This release can also be found as a 3 album limited edition release. The 3 CD set contains over 3.5 hours of music. I received only 2 albums for review. The first album, entitled 'Good News And Warning' holds 13 songs, while the 2nd, 'Altered Everything Forever', holds 18 songs. The limited edition 3rd album, 'The Golden Thread Which Binds Them' assaults you with another 16 mind-numbing songs. It's also nice to hear that Dwayne helped out a bit with the final production of the release.

What can I say about this release? It appears that Gary is continuing with his theme from the 'Catalyst' album. The songs on this release were written with the intention of conveying Gary's personal altered experiences with drugs. And that's exactly what they reflect. I'm not a fan of drug usage, but this is still an interesting musical concept to me and I enjoyed the trip that Gary took me on. This album is absolutely chaotic. It's absolutely exhausting to listen to. It makes you want to rip your brain out of your skull. And it's absolutely AWESOME!!

When it comes to Mentallo, you either love him, or hate him. I am a very big fan of Mentallo's older work, as I'm sure most Industrial fans are. However, many years have passed since we were blessed with 'Where Angels Fear To Tread' and I doubt we'll ever be getting another album such as that from Gary. However, I feel that even with this 2012 release, Gary reflects on an older Industrial past and through all the schizophrenic, unstructured tracks on this release, I still get a vibe of old school experimental Industrial. You're not going to be hearing any oontzy EBM style tracks on this album, but you will get a healthy dose of music in the realm of Skinny Puppy, Download, OhGr and perhaps older Front Line Assembly.

I've listened to this album a few times now, and I'm still hearing new things every time I listen. I will admit, it's a bit exhausting to get through. Upon my first listen, I was kind of like, what the hell is this? Some of the tracks are very repetitive and are perhaps a bit too long, but I'm thinking that's ultimately what Gary is trying to convey. An endless cycle that you can't rip free from until you come down.

The tracks contain many layers of sound, but somehow all come together to form an experimental Industrial masterpiece. If you are in the mood to listen to calm music, this is not the album to listen to. If you have an anxiety disorder, this album will probably make it worse. All in all, after listening to the albums a second time, I began to appreciate it more. The only reason I gave this a 7.5 instead of 8 is because it doesn't have a high re-playability rate for me. This is something that I'd need to be in the mood to listen to.

There are no vocals on the 2 CDs that I listened to, but there are samples of human voices throughout. I'm pretty sure a bunch of them are porn samples, but his representation of his mind altering experiences make it hard to pin point where exactly the samples are coming from.

If you are interested, Mentallo & The Fixer have a few side projects: Mainesthai, Benestrophe, Shimri, Parking Lot In Drug Form and Reign of Roses (all from the early 90's, except for Gary's solo project Shimri from 2000) Nov 27 2012