TeKnetium-99 - Solitude Refinement

TeKnetium-99 is an English one man band based in everything and anything; and that's not a stretch of the truth. Anything from industrial to hip hop, metal to ambient, and even some hints of dubstep, this guy has it all going for him. And, while their style certainly gives into a power, it also sheds a tear of weakness.

For example, the starting song simply titled Intro plays off as a swell and creepy dark ambient track. There is very little noise to be found within it, compromising of mainly self-interpreted sounds that can really be heard with a good pair of headphones. But, then, the next track really kinda throws you down a gutter.

And not a bad gutter, either. It's kinda cool to be thrown around in this muck. It's a low profile song, serving up distorted vocals alongside some slightly enhanced normal cords. But, the track itself picks up with some hip hop inspired beats, and that's where the song kind of suffered. Not that they're terrible beats, but that they don't flow as well as they could with the rest of the song.

Impure, to me, was an absolutely terrible song putting in some horrible rap lyrics and vocals that completely threw me off track. I mean, I don't often listen to rap, but I know the difference between what good and bad music is. And this is bad music.

But, the next track brought me back from the ground with where the beginning left off, with some sweet dark ambient music with some slight hints of hip hop. It worked extremely well. And then we're given a very different track from the rest titled Techfear, which serves up some screaming vocals with guitar work, delving into the electro-industrial side of things. The electronics could have been better, but there's not too much to complain about when it comes to this track.

Righteous Religion then kicks in with some industrial metal that really didn't go all too well. I mean, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't too good either. Everything in the song sounded as an industrial metal song should, but didn't do much to really improve on the genre as a whole.

And then Levitation shows us this man's skill when it comes to working with Dubstep. It worked pretty good, however, it wasn't the best on the album, and I think it was, despite being a good song, one of the weaker ones on the album.

F.U.C.K., as simply titled as it's titled, it's also very simply boring. More rap inspired lyrics, however, I may have been able to take this song a bit more serious if it wasn't for the title itself. I've heard some naughty song titles, but if you're gonna have swear words in your song title, at least try and make them somewhat entertaining to read. Not just a standard word such as "fuck".

The Dark Inside yet again throws in some more dubstep and plays out just like Levitation, just with more synth work mixed within it. And the final track on the album gives out more rap inspired lyrics and vocals. And, well, the vocals in it reminded me of impure, sounding pretty whiny and what-not, so, I'm just gonna skip over a description and say that it was bad.

And, well, that's all the songs on the album. As I said in the prelude to the review, this guy has his strengths and weaknesses scattered in this album. If his passion lies within rap, I really think he may need to consider and go straight with electro-industrial. The dark ambient tracks also were done very well, but the dubstep should probably be dropped as well. I'm not opposed to it, but I think this guy rockets in potential with his ambient instrumentals rather than not. I actually am looking forward to his next release; his stuff is good, I just hope he sticks to one style or another rather than flopping through half a dozen genres. Feb 11 2014