MARINER SONIQUE

A melting pot of bubbling lava in the form of percussion and drums in which you would be forgiven for thinking that you're listening to 'Muslimgauze'. If you can get past the amateurish front cover which looks like an entry in a seven year olds school art contest, and enjoy dark, creepy, atmospheric music, you'll be in for a treat here.

'Voice of Eye' are one of those difficult bands to describe. They create an atmosphere of impending doom right from the outset and continue throughout with their unusual blend of voodoo percussion and unearthly 'anti-christ' vocals.

They don't use synths and everything sounds organic but filtered through effects units until they are completely unidentifiable. Swirling and throbbing sound generators spin and twirl threateningly amongst effected vocals which are highly distorted and are mixed in with a lot of acoustic percussion. The good news is that there's some semblance of tune on each track, whereas, with a lot of this genre (Dark Industrial, Drone) there's nothing but a lot of forced emotional intentions which usually end up sounding uninspired in the extreme.

Unbelievably for a sound like theirs, they're from Texas and live in one of those non energy greenhouse igloo things where no electricity is delivered. Pah! This doesn't take away from the difficulty of writing a review for 'Mariner Sonique'. I can't recommend this to prog fans at all. Invariably they will be disappointed - for a start there ain't a guitar in sight.

Twanging electric machines and wobbly acoustics utilising sexy whispering female vocals followed by dismally downbeat male inhuman gargoyle groanings are rife throughout. Every other 'Voice of Eye' album that follows is far less heavy on the percussion front and are more vocal in approach. This is the odd one out, but is no worse off for it.