Pheromone - November

Pheromone is a Russian based industrial rock and electronic group consisting of four members: D.Fox (vocals, electronics), Deimos (guitars, percussion), Cassidy (guitars, percussion), and Shane (bass). Founded in 2009, they released their first full length album Dead Signal in 2012, and they managed to garner enough interest to get signed to Xperiment XIII, who have released their second full length album November on the first of that very same month.

Twelve tracks await on this album, from intro to outro, spanning around thirty nine minutes, and even featuring label mates Obsidian FX on the seventh track. The album is available in both CD format as well as digital, so you can pick your poison when it comes to that.

Now, onto the main attraction: The actual music. Imprinting serves up a short one minute intro to the album, starting off with a synth line filtered by other electronics, which then delivers some heavy drums, into guitar work, which leads straight into Mantra of Fearless.

Glitchy vocals, and a standard set of electronic rock comes breaking forth. The angered vocals, screaming half the time were well off compared next to the sharp music. The Confrontation comes with more of a focus on guitar than other instrumentation this time around, but for the most part still maintained the similar sound to the previous track.

I appreciated the electronic segments in Dreams, Venom and Tears, as they served as a good stall from the madness. The vocals served with a digital touch were also welcomed. Dark Horse really didn't throw anything new my way, but Blackout was a smoother song. The concentration on trying to match the electronics with the ferocity of the rock elements served out well.

In Your Eyes featured Obsidian FX, and I did appreciate the instrumental change up. Electronics took more of a dominant turn this time around, and the glitchy sound sort of present in other songs really came out nicely here.

The Royal Ceremony was a very welcome interlude on the album, utilizing orchestral electronics to serve something different. After that, Listen to Aftershock straight to Seems Like brought more industrial rock and electronics to the table, but it was nothing I found all too noteworthy. Oddly enough, Lost Memories, the outro, was an ambient piece with slight whispering involved. It was quite beautiful, and I really enjoyed it.

But, that's that. I enjoyed myself through this album, but I find the main problem within it to be that a lot of the songs come off as sounding way too similar to the next. It's partially because of the main focus on the rock elements; I mean, after all, you can only listen to the same guitar sounds and screaming before finally saying, "Is there anything more to this?" I think what would better serve these guys is if they actually input more electronics in their sound and experimented with their guitars more, that way the crunchy sound they deliver wouldn't get so stale so fast.

However, they still have potential through and through. They have proven with their intro, interlude, and even outro that instrumental electronic segments are something they can easily excel at. But, with those three songs not really advertised as the main attractions, it doesn't really help much. I still wish this four piece outfit a hearty future, and hope they can work out their wrinkles. They have talent, they just need to experiment further and not be afraid to go outside of the box. Nov 14 2014