Album: "Intravenous"
Label: Synapse (2002)
Style: Electro-industrial / EBM
Songs: 13

Reviewed by: Darklight

Z Prochek is the Swedish duo of Johan Otterheim and Martin Skanberg. This debut of theirs is packed with thirteen equally exciting songs. What they do that is rather unique is take elements of electro-industrial, EBM and synth-pop and combine them into one sound. The outcome is impressive to say the least.

The songs here are created with energetic electronic programming, driving bass beats, haunting melodies and a variety of different vocals from deep, clean and clear to angry and distorted. There are even female backing vocals by Carolina Nilsson in a lot of the songs.

This CD does a superb job of delivering a lot of diversity. You get upbeat EBM songs with untreated male vocals, mid-tempo dark trance songs with both male and female vocals, and a good batch of aggressive electro-industrial songs with distorted male vocals. The band pulls off each of these styles amazingly well. Instead of the songs sounding drastically different from each other, they blend all of these elements into one to allow them to fit together flawlessly.

This is a refreshing release for the fact that it will please a large listening audience. It mixes in a little bit of everything to appeal to most fans of industrial/EBM music. I highly recommend it.