Tino Claus is currently one of the most active musicians in the EBM/Industrial scene. In addition to his bands MRDTC, Amnistia and NER\ORGRIS, who are just taking off, he regularly releases new material as TC75.
5th, is the simple title of the 5th TC75 album. Once again, Tino Claus leads the listener into a world dominated by classic, Belgian-influenced EBM sounds. If you want to back this up with the usual comparisons, Dive, The Klinik and Signal Aout42 come to mind.
The album begins with the ominous sounding “So Dark [All over Europe]”. The first half of the song is dominated by an apocalyptic, even frightening mood, before the song gets a little more sonic breadth through a sequence, thereby losing a little of the oppressive atmosphere, but the arc of tension continues to build.
The very concentrated “Radiation” follows, the first minutes of the song are very, very sparsely instrumentalised, and when the sequences start and draw the listener in, the song is already over again. Which makes me want to listen to the whole thing again.
“Sun” had already been released as a single in advance. On the album, it’s a real wake-up call after the two previous songs. Significantly faster beats are flying around our ears. Musically, it reminds me a little of Front 242, and even more so of “Soul_Body”, but here a very modern F242 interpretation. With noisy sounds, the song drives like a steam hammer in only one direction. “Your Skin” keeps up the tempo easily and goes in the same direction.
Dark and “dragging” is “Suffer”, for example, and it is worthwhile to listen to the song with headphones. There are many little things to discover that you would miss if you just listened to it. “There Is a Pain” is a prime example of how Tino Claus builds up his song in small chunks. If you don’t listen closely, you might not even notice it, because every now and then there are small additions that make the song broader and more powerful.
The album closes with the soundtrack “Control”, a whopping 22 minutes of the artist going wild. Fans already know these soundtracks from the album “Duration”.
5th, is an album that uses the complete sound spectrum of the classic Belgian EBM scene and here and there also includes industrial sounds in the complete sound picture. The mood of the album is consistently dark to claustrophobic. The production is worth seeing, or rather hearing. What some might miss are catchy hooklines, but there are enough other bands for that. Anyone who is even remotely enthusiastic about EBM should definitely give this a listen.
TC75 @ Web
www.tc75.defacebook.com/tc75.music
