Album Review

XP8 – Drop the Mask

• 15th Jul 2010

This review is late, real late. My source is hounding me, his source is hounding him. It’s late because I really do not like writing negatively about anything without taking the time to at least know what the hell I’m talking about and why the hell I’m dissing it. I listened to this album when I first received the album in the post and instantly put it to the bottom of my long list of other reviews. Actually, doing this was the best thing I could’ve done for this album because when I finally picked it up again to review, my previous negative conceptions of the album were diluted somewhat, but not by much.

Rome’s XP8 and their fourth full length effort, ‘Drop the Mask’, belong to a genre that is squarely aimed at the dance floor of a dark and dingy EBM/Techno/Goth club. Any music played has a pre-requisite that keeps bods stomping the dance floor. Drop the Mask’, on the face of it, delivers what’s it’s supposed to. All the ingredients are there; influences from Frontline Assembly and Front 242 are immediately apparent. Unfortunately, nothing on this release has, in my opinion, the firepower needed to follow a track from the classic outfits of this genre. To me, it all seems a little soft. Sure, there’s the characteristic synth that leads the pounding beats but the hooks in the synth seem more euro-pop edged rather than having that real dark quality. Even the vocals don’t seem to have any malice, or sexiness in them, especially in the track ‘Want It’, allegedly the lead single expected to propel ‘Drop the Mask into global recognition. When a group writes a song desperately trying to have the lyrical content of a real dark, sexually deviant song like NIN’s ‘Closer’ but without sounding the least bit deviant, the message sounds more like a pre-pubescent virgin boy trying talking dirty to his first ever girlfriend.

The album does have higher points however. Tracks like ‘One Pill Missing’ does have a half decent hook and pace going about it and I can see this making the grade in the clubs and there are a couple of other tracks that have at least something going for them. ‘Out For Blood’ is one such example contains female vocals by Fetish Dolly and she proves that she could give KMFDM’s Lucia Cifarelli a good run for her money.

Overall, this is an album for hardcore Goth/Technofreaks only. I can’t see ‘Drop the Mask’ turning anyone’s head majorly but for those into the scene wanting to listen to something other than the staple offerings, you may get more out of this than I did.