Natural Lies - Cryptex

'Cryptex' merges typical 80's electronic body music sounds with modern synthpop, a combination that you will hear throughout these 11 tracks. This is the third album of this French duo which is a clear example that this band can mix different concepts in musical aspects on the same album. Harder EBM, with an evident 80's touch, in this case, it shows the maturity in the band. The growth of Netral Lies is noticeable and 'Cryptex' allow us to see it because the band gets reaches a higher musical level and in other parts of in their very promising career, with a amazing growth in a short time, just three years ago from their last release called 'A Deceptive Calm'.

Each song reveals intense keybords, effects and percussion beats, so the originality is easily perceived by the listeners. The intensity to the album appears from the beginning and the development is growing little by little with several moments of strength, and the energy expressed in the songs despite of the meaningless of the lyrics. There's no climax in this album, each song is an exclusive phase of a really complete album of EBM. Maybe you can find your favourite songs inside of it, but in general, the plot of the album is excellent and it has a perfect connection between all the songs, each song brings the pieces of the coherence with the rest of the album.

Negative points could be that the lyrics has not a deeper meaning and the vocals are not emphasized , also the female backing vocals in some tracks could sound a bit to loud in contrast with the main vocals, itás no very tidy. Anyway, these are just simple details in a great album and going back to what I said about the lyrics, I should say that is very common find meaningless english lyrics in internationals bands in these kind of genres, I mean, EBM was never the cradle of great poets.

Therefore this blend of avant-garde modern sounds and retro electro, as the band define themselves, could get the attention from the vintage electronic music lovers, but 'Cryptex' is a complete album, recommended for all the people who wants to find other sound structures in electronic music or people who is tired to listen always the same sounding EBM or synthpop. 'Cryptex' is definitely an original album with perfect relation between each one of its tracks. Nov 22 2013