The Cyber Metal Thread

Jamie Christopherson - "Metal gear Rising: Revengeance Vocal Tracks" (2013)

I believe that this video game soundtrack was Christopherson's first foray into metal territory. He's usually known for his ethnically-tinged orchestral scores but here we see him collaborating with former Machine Head guitarist Logan Mader for a series of futuristic cyber metal pieces that rarely exceed the 2 minute mark. Most tracks have multiple mixes included in the lengthy 71 minute run time & it can drag a bit given the repetition. To be honest, this sits a fair way outside of my comfort zone anyway as the guitars are held too far back in the mix with the electro-industrial beats & samples being much more dominant. During the best moments I sometimes find Strapping Young Lad popping into my mind but these are generally too brief which is the nature of these sort of releases & they're inevitably cancelled out by cheesier tracks that remind me far too much stuff like of Linkin Park anyway. Overall, I'd suggest that I only enjoy around 45% of the tracklisting so I can't justify the healthy scores this release seems to draw from the video game audience. Fans of Neurotech, Deathstars & Sybreed may find something of interest here but it's not for me personally.

3/5

Hah!  The last post was three years ago?  OK, I'm raising the activity here before things get any deader than they are.

Sybreed - Antreas (2014)

Genre: Cyber Metal

Cyber metal is probably the single metal genre most metalheads don't take seriously.  I've been through and started a fair share of cyber metal albums, and usually I don't find something that appealing.  It's a shame because I like the idea of spacey-industrial metal, but not enough people know how to take charge of it without falling into Periphery half-djent half-metalcore territory.  Maybe this is because one of the big bands that started the genre seems to take a few cues from them.

As for Antares, there is one compliment I'd like to start with: these guys are pretty good with atmospheres.  Even though their style is typical and their components are expected, their atmospheres and the vocals bring the album together pretty well.  This is especially true for the slower songs like Isolate.  But the best thing about this album is that, even though the components are expected for this kind of Periphery knockoff, there's some clear variety.  For example, there's the musical midtro of Revive My Wounds, which goes really deep into atmosphere, neoclassical synths and even a couple seconds of robotic vocals.  The extra variety is a good move to me; I had started Slave Design but I didn't finish it because it was quite samey.  There's also some clear melo or tech death mingled in with the melodic metalcore.  Of course, despite the variety, the emotional touch seems to have each song fluctuating between sadness and anger too often, another Periphery trait.  Eventually, it just becomes too much.  I mean, ending this overlong album with a nine-minute epic was a band move, considering it offers nothing really new to the album.

If I had to fault the album for anything besides the typical radio-metal components, I'd say that it's a little too noisy.  It's heavy most times, but at other times it feels needlessly noisy.  They should've gotten a producer like Andy Gill, who brought cleanliness to the sound (and as a result, griminess to the style) of Killing Joke 2003.  So while these guys have talent, they were clearly more worries about the reputation of the tropes rather than making a name for themselves alone.  So it's a cool album with many strengths that justify its flaws and tropes, but I would only really recommend this to people who like industrial music already.

85/100

Mechina - Cenotaph (2023)

Genres: Symphonic Metal, Cyber Metal

You know what I hate?  When people say they absolutely love a band that is writing the same song over and over and over again.  I mean, let's be honest.  Mechina are more samey than AC/DC.  So when I played this last Mechina album I needed before I completed another metal catalog, I knew what I was getting into.  This is another dull example of overly speedy drums working with synthy riffs and vocals going for a stronger "epic" vibe than the third Legend of Spyro game.  I saw those cutscenes, and this band might've been perfect for that.  And on top of that, almost every song is 7 minutes or more, and I'm including the six-minute-fifty song because I might as well.  Sure, it's well polished and very speedy.  But it gets to the point where you kind of realize that the only one displaying talent is the drummer.  The good stuff fluctuates and is often drowned in excess repetition, so this album may as well be strictly for Mechina fans.

57/100

For fun I made three challenge lists for the Sphere.

1st Era

1. Godflesh – Streetcleaner
2. Ministry – Psalm 69
3. Killing Joke – Pandemonium
4. Strapping Young Lad - Xity
5. Fear Factory – Demanufacture
6. Rammstein – Sehnsucht
7. Marilyn manson – Antichrist Superstar
8. White Zombie - Astro-Creep: 2000 - Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head
9. Red Harvest – Hybreed
10. Samael – Ceremony of Opposites
11. Nailbomb – Point Blank
12. Dødheimsgard – 666 International
13. Static-X – Wisconsoon Death Trip
14. Slab! – Descension
15. Old – Low Flux Tube
16. KMFDM - Nihil
17. Lard – The Last Temptation of Reid
18. Circle of Dust – Brainchild
19. Kong – Phlegm
20. Oomph! - Oomph!
21. Pitchshifter – www.pitchshifter.com
22. 16volt – SuperCoolNothing
23. Misery Loves Co. – Misery Loves Co.
24. Die Krupps - II: The Final Option
25. Skrew - Dusted


2nd Era
1. Strapping Young Lad – Alien
2. Rammstein – Mutter
3. Godflesh - Hymns
4. Killing Joke  Killing Joke
5. Red Harvest - Sick Transit Gloria Mundi
6. KMFDM – Hau Ruck
7. Ministry – Rio Grande Blood
8. Fear Factory - Digimortal
9. Sybreed – Slave Design
10. Kill the Thrill – Tellurique
11. HALO – Body of Light
12. Pain – Nothing Remains the Same
13. Eisbrecher - Antikörper
14. The Axis of perdition - Deleted Scenes From the Transition Hospital
15. Flesh Field – Strain
16. Turmion Kätilöt – Hoitovirhe
17. P.H.O.B.O.S. - Tectonics
18. Aborym – Generator
19. Dødheimsgard – Supervillain Outcast
20. Spineshank – The Height of Callousness
21. Static-X – Machine
22. Deathstars – Terminal Bliss
23. The mad Capsule Markets – 010
24. Mnemic – The Audio Injected Soul
25. Emigrate – Emigrate

The Modern Era

1. Godflesh – Post Self
2. Fear Factory - Mechanize
3. Northlane – Alien
4. Rammstein - Rammstein
5. Code Orange – Underneath
6. Author and Punisher – Beastland
7. Rob Zombie - Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor
8. Blue Stalhi – Blue Stalhi
9. Fange – Pantocrator
10. Uniform – Shame
11. Sybreed – God Is an Automaton
12. Static-X - Project: Regeneration Vol. 1
13. 3TEETH – shutdown.exe
14. Linemann – F & M
15. Motionless in White – Scoring the End of the World
16. Mechina – Conquerer
17. Neurotech - Infra Versus Ultra
18. Celldweller – Satellites
19. Circle of Dust – Machines of Our Disgrace
20. Oomph! - Ritual
21. Black Magnet – Hallucination Scene
22. Emigrate – Silent So Long
23. Lord of the Lost – Thornstar
24. Corrections House – Last City Zero
25. Shining – One One One

Good lists, Rex! I think those can be good replacements for the one official Sphere clan challenge. Please talk to Ben about that idea. Anyway, I approve of those lists, except Samael's earlier black metal was still dominant in Ceremony of Opposites, maybe replace that album with Passage or Eternal?

Good lists, Rex! I think those can be good replacements for the one official Sphere clan challenge. Please talk to Ben about that idea. Anyway, I approve of those lists, except Samael's earlier black metal was still dominant in Ceremony of Opposites, maybe replace that album with Passage or Eternal?

Whichever Samael feels most appropriate.  Obviously, I'd let others flesh these out as I haven;t heard most of these.

Also, wrong thread by accident.

Today I decided to check out a couple cyber metal albums to gain some ideas for tracks in future Sphere playlists, both of which each deserve a 4-star rating from me:

Part of a massive conceptual saga that is basically like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe combined and played out like Rhapsody of Fire's sagas, all in a bombastic style of extreme djenty symphonic/cyber metal.

A compilation of 4 EXACTLY 10-minute grand instrumental epics that are dubbed, you guessed it, "symphonies", released as singles before a whole collection of them, all in the project's symphonic take of the usual ambient electro-industrial/cyber metal.

Also, Symphonies II has the industrial metal genre and cyber metal subgenre, but it's missing The Sphere clan on the release page. Could you please correct that in the database, Daniel? Thanks.