1 Comment Written by FLIP on October 23, 2008 – 11:36 am

Artist: Evil9

Album: They Live!

Rating: 9.5/10

Similar Artists: Adam Freeland, UNKLE, Alex Metric, Bassbin Twins, James Lavelle, Hyper, AutoKratz, Soulwax, Daft Punk, EL-P, Juice Aleem, Beans, Toastie Taylor, Mr.Oizo, Cagedbaby, Juice Aleem, TV on The Radio, Bloc Party, Serge Santiago, SebAstian.

Genre: Breaks, rock, electro, electronica, hip-hop, zombie dancefloor clash.

Link: http://www.myspace.com/evilnine

I was lucky enough to get a promo copy from the nice folks at beatbroker before They Live! was released online @ marineparade today. I’m so glad I did because I’ve been pulling my hair out for months waiting for a new release after hearing unreleased mixes on the international DJ circuit. After the massive debut album, ‘You can be special too’, you’d expect somewhat of a worthy successor from these Brighton boys who’ve been very quiet for the past few years - and its here.. in 3 words… Zombie. Electro. Breaks

Zombies and Breakbeats are my two favourite things. Combining the two things, to me, is absolute genius. Finally someone is having fun with music with a bit of depth and concept intertwined to make something original and outstanding.

While many of the prominent figures in electronic music right now are focusing on mashup and fidget sounds, Evil9 have come back with a total disregard for genre rules. Melting together rock, breaks, electro and hip-hop with a dark and dirty arsenal of 80’s horror synths, filthy, dark and brooding bass lines, droning vocals, vocoders and some surprising collaborations.

The dance floor stomper single ‘They Live!’ has been turning heads for a while but the rest of the album just gets better with collaborations by Autokratz, Emily Breeze and once again with Toastie Taylor. It would be hard to find any one single track on here with no appeal to someone. Normally I have a beef with at least one track on an album but They Live! fills the gaps with mind bending noise and appropriately themed sound scapes. Without trying to sugar coat it, because I normally never like an album start to finish, I can’t find very much to fault with this one.

And by the way, did I mention the awesome cover artwork by Dan Mumford?