Music Review: Chrysalide – Don’t Be Scared, It’s About Life

Chrysalide – Don’t Be Scare, It’s About Life
Label: Artoffact Records
Release: July 10th, 2012

What are they putting in the water over in France? I know Horror movie fans have noticed the French are making some crazy good horror films these days. Now I think they are moving into Industrial music. Chrysalide is a fine example of heavy Industrial done right. If Skinny Puppy and Combichrist had an illegitimate child suffering from neglect and abuse, Chrysalide would be that child.

“Don’t Be Scared, It’s About Life” is twenty-two tracks of electronic Industrial chaos. With a running time of one hour, eighteen minutes, you get your fill if you are a fan of this kind of music. Chrysalide effortlessly mixes angry, harsh, aggressive vocals over grungy, electronic noise with tourette like fits of rhythms and melody.

With so much music on one album, Chrysalide does the smart thing and changes things up both between tracks and even during tracks. Tracks like “Give Me Something Stronger” and “Anger Is A Show” you get very harsh, processed vocals over fast and chaotic pounding digital beats. Sometimes with guitar sampling thrown in here and there. Heavy music sure to give sane people nightmares.

Songs like “Let’s Talk About This During Dinner” and “Not My World” follow closer to the Skinny Puppy vein of music. There are noisy, yet bouncy electronic beats mixed with harsh, creepy vocals that switch between aggressive screaming and slower melodic singing. There are hits of sampling tossed about for atmosphere as well. Hell, parts of “Not My World” could very easily be mistaken by a listener as a Skinny Puppy track (not a bad thing).

Then there is “Lizzie and The Charming Prince“, which I think is the Chrysalide version of a ballad. It’s creepy, music box like music with slow and harsh vocals over top. Peppered with bits of aggressive electronic noise at times. All pretty creepy.

There are a couple of weak tracks on the album that didn’t do much for me. The weakest however, I would say, is the cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall“. I feel like Chrysalide tried too hard to force their style to fit the song. It comes off just muddy and too noisy really. It didn’t work for me at all.

Chrysalide’s “Don’t Be Scared, It’s About Life” is everything good Industrial music is about. Harsh, aggressive, melodic, scary and raw. If you dig that style of music, and bands like Skinny Puppy or Combichrist, definitely pick up a copy of “Don’t Be Scared, It’s About Life.”

Website: http://www.noize-guerilla.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chrysalide.audiotrauma

Buy the album:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/14341176″ params=”auto_play=false&show_artwork=true&color=b4b18d” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]