MISANTHROFEEL

Misanthrofeel lays out their stall on this demo EP. Sampled harsh industrial guitars with some sampled more orchestral instruments to soften up the sound. A sound which is industrial. Back in the old days, this was industrial metal and it still is industrial metal today.

The quality of the tracks here is not good at all. The music sounds disjointed without any purpose. It is like throwing pieces of chicken, tomatos and cod into a big stew and hope against belief that it will taste good. It does not taste good. This is a demo and it has a very good sound and that is the best thing I can say about this demo. But this is not a good start.

1.5 stars

This one-man bedroom project from Russia have some releases readily available as free downloads for your pleasure. Go ahead and download.

The first composition is a heavy sludgy wall of sound with a melodic piece of keyboards, nee computer keyboard sampled keyboards on the top of that. The other composition is a lot more varied with a goth theme also coming in halfway through.

The problem is that this is pretty one dimentional music and samey. The music is not original at all. Treponem Pal did this 20 years ago, but with instruments. Godflesh, which continued as Jesu (listed in PA) also did the same and Napalm Death were into much of this themselves. What we get is a rerun of old ideas, twelve minutes and eight seconds long.

This is not a bad free download. It is a decent EP, but nothing more.

2 stars

Misanthrofeel is based on electronics and is a bedroom project. Or a studio project if you want. But a laptop fits perfectly in a bedroom. The music is pretty simplified with some structures which is taken out to the end. This album is mainly based on tribal rhythms and harsh sampled guitar sounds. This is a metal album with sampled instruments, created in a bedroom. There is no organic material here. In the good old days, we called this industrial metal.

The songs are half decent. Just half decent. It does not sounds like there is much creativity here as in progressive rock. There are a couple of decent melody lines here and that's all. But the bad sound is a big problem here and it is therefore heading for my turkey yard. In short, don't bother.

1 star

Misanthrofeel are an experimental project created and performed by the Russian composer. The album is fully instrumental with horror themes. As soon as the album begins the room will go darker as we hear a scratchy vinyl sound of eerie piano. The doomy metal chords created on the next few tracks generate a heavy ominous atmosphere. The keyboards are well executed and it is at times difficult to believe the whole album was created on a computer. The stark cold synth lines and crunching guitar sounds juxtaposed together form a layer of Gothic ambience. The front cover of the album may well be the scene of a death or suicide which would be fitting to the music. This is not an album for the faint of heart as it is downright creepy.

'Nightmares' has a chilling vibe, very downbeat and ethereal, as if it is a soundtrack to a horror movie. The creaking footsteps and crying baby effects augment this haunting atmosphere. The effects tend to tell a story, albeit a macabre one involving a pervading portentous occurrence. The music threatens to scream out suddenly and jolt the listener but never does, yet the permeating distorted guitar chords over a layer of keyboard motifs are the main threat.

After a musical box is heard, a symbol of innocence, there is the sound of waves on a beach, a symbol of isolation. 'On The Shore' features a very ambient synth line and some chittering effects until a strong piano is heard playing a haunting melody. The wind howling adds to the atmosphere of doom. I liked the high piano notes that are as sinister as the soundtrack to "Eyes Wide Shut". The slow melodies patiently meander along, and this track has a spacey sound on synths. One of the better tracks.

'Through Anxiety' has a nice bassy synth and strong descending chord structures. It builds very slowly, with stark gloomy sounds. It is one of the darkest tracks especially due to the disturbing effects. It may be the soundtrack of a killer stalking his prey in the darkened forest.

'Wreckage' begins with a car driving off and we can guess that the track will be based on a horrific car crash. The melody is downbeat and foreboding, as we hear the sounds of cars driving past. One may imagine a lonely road with a driver about to meet their fate. The car screeches and crashes eventually, heavy breathing is heard, so we can presume the driver survived.

'Ortni' is another scratchy track with weird backtracked effects. We hear the sounds of a gun being cocked back and then there is the disturbing sound of a machine gun firing and dogs wailing. The atmosphere is blood curdling on this. The sound of a woman crying is heard as she discovers the dead animals. This is as bleak as I have heard; a very disconcerting track.

The bonus track 'Expectance' is more of the synth lines and cold glum atmospheres. The distorted guitar chords return and it ends the album with some more skittering effects.

Overall this album would work as a chilling soundtrack to a stalk and slash movie or a movie that centres around death or shadowy ghostly occurences. It was certainly worth a listen but I am not sure I would return often to this rather unsettling eerie music.

Having gone on a hiatus from full-length releases in favour of shorter EP experiments, the dark ambient project Misanthrofeel is back with another development in it's sound. This time focusing more on the ambient side of things over the heavier 'metal' sound, 'Emptiness Within' is without a doubt the mysterious composer's most professional full- length effort to date, although some of the work's more adventurous samples end up coming across as somewhat tacky.

While all of the instruments here are completely virtual, Misanthrofeel makes the right decision here to go for a more ambient and electronic approach over the doom/ethnic metal roots, which made Misanthrofeel's music feel more like a GuitarPro file than a finished product. However, unlike 'XII-XIII-XIV' (his purely ambient EP released in 2010), there are still some traces of a metal sound. Many of the tracks are very minimalistic, although effective in the way they slowly build. While Dmitry (the man behind this work) is indeed a good composer and has shown as much throughout his time working under the Misanthrofeel pseudonym, the music here focuses much more on the way he is able to arrange different sounds together on the computer. The result is ultimately mixed.

Many of the songs here almost feel like short auditory films; they give a very vivid mental image that is usually tied in with the title. 'Nightmares' for example sounds like it's scoring a gothic horror film, whilst 'On The Shore' takes us to some dark and tattered beach. The music and vibe throughout is consistently dark and filled past the brim with despair. While this does work well to some extent in many of the songs, it can get overbearing to the point where it's hard to take the atmosphere of the music seriously. The legitimate album closer 'Ortni' for example, features a repetitive machine gun firing sound, along with a dog whimpering, and a woman crying throughout the second half of the track. Unfortunately, Misanthrofeel lacks the darkness necessary to make subject matter like this really work.

While this is far from the best thing Misanthrofeel has released musically, it does show a very profound development in his sound, especially when looking back at the rather raw and unpolished demo. However, a return to the beautiful, intricate compositions of 'Sampleria' would be very welcomed, albeit with the new, more computer-oriented and professional sound arrangements this Russian artist now employs.

The first thing that enters my mind is the similarities between the material here and Red Harvest's There's Beauty in the Purity of Sadness album. An album that took the listeners to the highs and lows of the mankind. An album that presented grief and pestilence as something very beautiful which is to be cherished. Misanthrofeel's Idle album feels both like a distilled version of that album...... and a left over album from that recording session. Which Idle is not, due to the time span and biology.

Idle is a one trick pony album which drones over one theme and stretches that out to almost cover this whole album. The theme goes from esoteric industrial to rather biological industrial over the length of this theme. Drums, bass, synths and electric guitars has been programmed into the computer and goes through an industrial process before is presented as this album.

The quality is pretty good throughout. I am by no means a fan of this music, but Idle is a good album. The main theme is a great theme and I like how it goes from esoteric to almost being organic at the end. It is a recommended download.

3 stars

"Tea Party" This is a jam with potential marred by an overly thick sound. The drums suffer from a mechanical repetitiveness. Worst of all, there is no melody to save it, and it fades out without purpose.

"Cookie Monster" The electronic sounds offer some variety, but the composition doesn't. The guitar is still terribly muddy and the drums may as well not even be there. The beastly growl is rather cool, and so is the theme, but the track fails to maintain interest.

"13th" Again, not a bad idea here, but the sounds render the composition completely unbelievable. It is heavy, but unconvincingly so.

"Stagnation" The album closes with what could have been a promising instrumental. The potential is certainly there, but the humanity is not.

With such an intriguing name, I felt I had to go back to the music of Russian electronic project Misanthrofeel and check out the latest installment in a stream of extended plays. Featuring an exotic, eastern-styled mode much like fellow Moscovite project Senmuth, Misanthrofeel is unique because all of the instruments here are artificial, composed and arranged through the use of a PC. While the cold, almost 'old school video game' sound of the music really deters from the more emotionally resonant pieces of music, there have been a few pieces of work from this Russian one man act that have worked very well in spite of the production method. The latest installment 'Cookie Monster' however, is quite a disappointment.

With a duology of EPs (one focusing on funeral doom, the other on haunting ambient work) released earlier this year and then compiled as one entity with the 'Idle' collection, Misanthrofeel was finally showing that he could bypass alot of the sound issues that the artificial production caused, and still create music bloated with atmosphere. That being said, it becomes all the more of a wonder why Misanthrofeel has decided to take a step back in his development and make 'Cookie Monster' sound like something more along the lines of his earliest work. The music here does retain the exotic doom approach, but in a much less polished and amateurish state than the funeral doom work '6.04' turned out to be. While there is some electronic ambiance surrounding the guitar and drum soundalike tones, it does little to contribute to the music. As compositions, none of these really stand out, instead revolving around one or two light melodies over distorted guitar sludge; a formula used to death in the project's full length efforts.

'Cookie Monster' is quite a disappointment overall, especially with Misanthrofeel releasing some pretty strong stuff with '6.04' and it's ambient counterpart. I am a supporter of Misanthrofeel's music and ambition surely, but it seems like the project still needs to keep going down the route that '6.04' was taking it, instead of going back a few steps and sitting down.

A link in a long line of EPs produced by the man behind the pseudonym of Misanthrofeel, 'Ultimate Senseless' is a visible return to the project's roots as a dreary industrial metal act. While the preceding EP 'Leisurely' brought a new sound to the table (in the vein of post-doom metal,) this one feels a bit too much like a b-sides compilation from Misanthrofeel's first full-length album 'Sampleria.'

While the compositions may be on par to some extent, with the majority of Misanthrofeel's releases, this one-man band is prone to reinventing itself with each new session. 'Ultimate Senseless' on the other hand, recalls back to the earliest material; before any of the ethnic or doom sounds were used overtly. While the debut album 'Sampleria' is (to date) my favourite release from Misanthrofeel and it impressed me with alot of it's extended compositions, 'Ultimate Senseless' feels like it focuses on the weaker portions of the debut; the shorter, heavier and less involving tracks.

In terms of production, things feel a bit off here. While all of the music here (and all other releases by this act) is electronically produced and uses artificial software instruments, it feels like there is a bit too much of a noisy, crackled edge to this that can't be heard on any other album. Perhaps it is due to an effort to make this heavier and more abrasive sounding, but the guitar emulation can be akin to radio static at times.

To this EP's benefit however, the atmospheric closer to 'Ultimate Senseless,' 'Ocean' has to be one of my favourite tracks that Misanthrofeel has ever done. It is a very gentle piece and doesn't try to be needlessly heavy. It works beautifully well, and hopefully Misanthrofeel can release more laid-back, yet purposeful music like this in the future. For the moment however, 'Ultimate Senseless' does not retain the sort of impact that better releases from Misanthrofeel have had for me.

The man behind the music of Misanthrofeel must have noticed that the potential of his second full-length release 'Easterica' had not been fulfilled. As a result, 'Revision' was born. This is not a batch of fresh music (with the footnote exception of a single new ambient track) but a new, modified run through of Misanthrofeel's oriental metal spectacle. With that in mind, 'Revision' certainly suffers from alot of the same problems that it's parent had to deal with, but the addition of some new touches and flourishes, as well as a more effective track sequence makes this the definitive edition of 'Easterica,' essentially making the first version obsolete.

The music revolves around the same formula for the most part; hypnotic, exotic melodies playing overtop an electronic emulation of metal heaviness. While the lack of variety in the compositions is still to the album' detriment, there are some more effective timbres and sounds used, to make the music sound alot warmer and professional.

The ambient self-titled track 'Easterica' isn't much to write home about, but it's a dark epilogue to the album, and takes the fact that all of the music is computerized (no live instruments involved!) to it's advantage by using layers of ambience that would be alot harder to achieve without the use of a software program.

While there is not alot of difference in between the two versions of 'Easterica,' this version is certainly superior to it's predecesssor, by introducing new sounds and a more professional vibe to the table. Don't expect a world of change, however.