Album: "Circuits and Curses"
Label: N/A (2004)
Style: Coldwave
Songs: 11

Reviewed by: Darklight

Firewerk returns with a much stronger and more focused release with this Circuits and Curses album. This four man band is all about making hard, heavy and aggressive industrial music this time out.

While this music is primarily electronic, there's a good helping of guitar in the mix as well. This could ultimately be described as coldwave music with its punk angst and energy combined with technical electronic programming and beats. I really miss this type of music, and it's nice to hear it again. Especially considering how good Firewerk manages to pull it off.

The programming here is nicely layered, the melodies are dark, the beats are heavy, the guitars are thrashy and the singing is angry. After hearing so much future pop these days, it's nice to listen to an album like this that packs a powerful punch of heaviness and aggression. Forget about all the commercial nu metal and industrial rock bands on major labels, this Firewerk album is exactly how modern heavy industrial music with guitar should sound.

Album: "Amplified Fragments"
Label: N/A (2001)
Style: Heavy industrial
Songs: 10

Reviewed by: Darklight

Firewerk is a four man heavy industrial rock band that are having a slight identity crisis on this album. Basically, some songs sound like European electro-industrial similar to Birmingham 6 or New Mind, while others sound like American industrial rock similar to Stabbing Westward. While they do both styles quite well, I think they need to decide what genre they would like to focus on as the two just don't fit onto one album very well. I personally prefer their darker more aggressive and distorted heavy electro-industrial sound, but their more commercial industrial rock sound could gain them more popularity.

I think they could benefit from writing better lyrics as well. Hearing the word "crickets" shouted constantly, or the line "you're on your way to work" or "god dammit what the fuck is going on here" over and over again just doesn't cut it for me.

My advice to the band would be to tone down on the rock guitars, rock singing and cheesy lyrics and focus more on their electro-industrial side such as distorted electronic music and vocals with more creative lyrics.