Implant - The Productive Citizen

Writing this review took me way too long. Why? Because I have the feeling that this album is so "meh" that I don't even know what to write about. Implant is a project of a very established musician in our scene - Len Lemeire from Belgium. I have to admit, I never was into them much. The name appears here and there either on compilations or as a remixer but I always recognized the sound as being a well-produced more techno-like EBM.

The new album 'The Productive Citizen' consists of 12 new tracks. There are additional limited editions also available. The 2CD or even 3CD versions offer couple of B-sides and plethora of remixes, but we only got the main album for a review so I can't say anything about the quality of those.

The album starts with a slow paced song - "Lord Knows I Tried". I can only guess (as it's not stated anywhere in the press info) that his song comes with guest vocals by Claus Larsen of Leaether Strip. Sounds from TB303-like machines, crazy cutoff bleeps and squeeks is what I have imagined it would sound like and I was right. The second track "C.C.C.P.C.C.T.V.", which I'd say should be the promotional single of this album, comes with faster 4x4 beat. Fortunately this isn't another goa-trance festival on Ibiza. It's a well-paced and quite oldschool sounding song. Actually the whole album is like that. You can definitely hear the Belgian-EBM sound on this album. It's no screamo-wannabies, but it ain't VNV Nation either. It's a decent produced portion of music from someone who has his own style, and been doing this stuff for years.

This is also what hurts this album the most in my opinion. There's nothing new here. It's all "OK". Unfortunatelly it sounds as if coming from a music factory and not from a very inspired musician. The album just runs through and if it wasn't for writing the review I wouldn't probably even notice if it was on a playlist. I can't even name any of a standout tracks. I guess the only one that got my attention was the before mentioned "C.C.C.P.C.C.T.V.", the rest is just "meh".

If you're looking for something fresh and new, this is not the thing to get. If you're a fan of Belgium-EBM or if you like the oldschool sound of our scene, you should probably get this album. Unfortunately for this album, I belong to the first group of the listeners. May 07 2013