[rayword45]

Day 14: Zero Data Index v2 by Veqtor (Album Choice: XCV)

Tonight's album is a breakcore album. I like some breakcore, it's not my favorite genre but there is some good stuff. It's also completely free on Bandcamp so everyone who reads this should listen to it. I'm saying this before I listen to the album because hey, if I don't like it, you might, and if it REALLY REALLY sucks you should share my pain. Time to review.

So there's very little info on this guy on the internet. I dunno if this guy is actively seeking out a large fanbase, but Jesus teach this man about marketing. I found his site, no thanks to Google. His album titles are really dull. Analogik3, Wavetrace and the album I'm listening to now, these are album titles? I'm not talking much about the music but shut up let me vent. This guy might have a better chance of being known if a Google search for his pseudonym plus an album title didn't result in stocks showing up.

Well, back to talking about the music. This is pretty abrasive stuff here, a dark atmosphere runs throughout and some of the breaks/mangled synths actually feel like they're causing ear damage. Fragments starts out sounding like an attempt to cause tinnitus, and has very little in the way of actual "notes" coming out of your headphones, to the point where this feels like borderline harsh noise.

Xilence contains a guest artist, P. Sandström. Based on the internet, he's a transportation company in Finland... Seriously literally no info on this guy. This track is interesting as the longest track because the first 2 minutes are nothing but guitar noodling, which allows you a well-deserved break after 8 tracks of pure abrasive breaks. Then the breaks start building up again, with a little bit of tribal influence. The guitar isn't bad, but it's just some boring freeform jazzy noodling that isn't even smooth-sounding, which is what a rest track should be. Yup, that was a boring-ass 12 minutes. I prefer the abrasive tracks by a lot.

Huh, these tracks seem to get more and more melodic as they go on. The last track is predominantly synth-based, with lots of breaks from the breaks. Hahaha I'm not funny.
And now the albums over. Damn that was intense. The first 8 tracks are really harsh with a spacy atmosphere and very little in the way of melody. The 9th track was garbage free jazz, and the last 3 tracks are a bit more on the melodic side but still pound your face with those breaks. Overall, that was pretty good, if not for everyone, but damn it needs more balance. And that 9th track, one-fifth of the album at 12 minutes, dragged it down A TON.

3 ratings on RYM and a 4.31 average. Boy, I'm gonna drag that average down a considerable amount and this wasn't even a bad album.

Best Track: Stealth (I didn't mention it by name in the review. It's the last song.)
Rating: 6/10