Velvet Acid Christ / Hex Angel
Album: Hex Angel   Collection:Deep Storage 200704
Artist:Velvet Acid Christ   Added:Sep 2003
Label:Metropolis Records  

A-File Activity
Add Date: 2003-12-29 Pull Date: 2004-03-01 Charts: Electronic, Classical/Experimental

Album Review
rE\dOx
Reviewed 2003-12-26
Typical of this genre of music Hex Angel is presented with the assistance of electronic-generated sounds, be they audio samples or synthesized chord progressions. Velvet Acid Christ is the brain child of Bryan Erickson and has been releasing records for about 7 years. In this his latest album, he brings us a great release where he touches on various types of sub-genres fitting under the "industrial" umbrella. He goes from the slow, gothic-sounding "Pretty Toy" to the harsh, noize-driven tracks of "Misery" and "Dead Tomorrow." It's nice to see Erickson always uncovering musical layers from album to album and not resting on the success of Fun With Knives and Twisted Thought Generator. Also, if you're a fan of the Movie Fight Club, you'll recognize quite a few samples sprinkled throughout the record.
the good: great sampling; excellent programming; nice tempo variation throughout album...keeps you listening. the bad: voice is always too far in the background the ugly: rips on bands in his same genre (in the booklet)...not cool.
potty-mouth tracks: 1,2,3,4---most are after song ends, read inside

(note: all numbers are out of 10, i.e. 5/10)1.Haunted: nice samples on the intro; good beat; ends at (-0:54)--be SURE to stop there 'cause outro has lots of non-FCC conforming words (8) 2.Collapsed: really good beat; nice scary sample and some aggressive vocals; ends at (-1:07)--once again, be SURE to stop here because of profanity in the outro (9) 3.Pretty Toy: slower track with a smooth beat; really good; swear (-1:53)"I haven't been fucked liked that since grade school" (9) 4.Hypoxia: slower, darker mood song; swear (-5:00)"you fucking liar" (7) 5.Misery: noisy intro; nice beat to stomp around to; harsher (9) 6.East(meaningless life mix): instrumental track; some beats and samples (7) 7.Dead Tomorrow: great, great beat with "noize" overtones; one of my faves of the album (9.5) 8.Convex: a dark-electro track w/ some nice synth work (8) 9.Eva: the "red-headed step-child" track; different from all others; more on a downbeat and lofi (8) 10.Crawl: slower, more haunting; nice ritual chant in the song; spoooky (8) 11.Exit(diseased world): other instrumental track; nothing great (7)

review courtesy of rE\dOx

Track Listing
1. Haunted   6. East
2. Collapsed   7. Dead Tomorrow
3. Pretty Toy   8. Convex
4. Hypoxia   9. Eva
5. Misery   10. Crawl
  11. Exit