music review:

HALO ::: "halo"

Doom-industrial-metal-soundscapes

This certainly isn't music that you'd put on at a dinner partee. Unless, that is, you become fed up with morons talking crap and decide you want a quiet evening of forlorn faces regressing into the darkness and isolation of the lost wandering souls that lurks behind their pretentious facades. I can't imagine much food being eaten either at this party; a table full of people staring out in front of themselves overpowered by the drone that is Halo.

As stated in Halo's bio "...the drone is the healer: know the drone: the drone knows your body your mind inside out..." Personally I hate polite uppity dinner partees (but please, if you were thinking of inviting me to one, don't let that deter you!) but if ever I was forced to host one I'd be very tempted to play this, along with early 80s Laibach and SPK to make sure everyone kept quiet and didn't make smalltalk rubbish... er, perhaps I should get back to the music, huh?

From Melbourne, Halo paint very bleak pictures of industrial desolation through heavy guitars, heavy bass, heavy drums and despairing vocals that sound like they're coming from the end of a very long tunnel. I don't know what country the vocalist is from but I'll take a guess that he's from hell� or at least that's where he presently resides. Very slow droning doomy stuff reminiscent of Godflesh but more brooding by miles. They also remind me of Loop who were one of my favourite bands in teenage years. The similarity is in the repetitive hypnotic nature of the music along with the obscure undecipherable vocals - though Halo is much MUCH darker.

The CD & bio packaging is unique and very effective too. Very suitable to the alienation of the music. It even comes with a floppy-disc for Windows that contains pages from their web-site as well as imagery, lyrics and more. My favourite deconstructions are "like cancer" and "spiral close". 11 tracks spread over 60 minutes. Great therapy music for when you have to feel through your pain in order to resolve it. Released on CDr. Great to see more bands doing this. Please support them.

$10 from:

Embryo Recordings - Po box 340 Clifton Hill Vic 3068 Australia..

E-mail: [email protected]

http://antisound.cjb.net