Lighter than Rammstein, heavier than Peter Gabriel, poppier than Ministry, less depressing than Depeche Mode.  That's about the best I can do to describe the electro-metal of MXD.  A hodgepodge of genre conventions, MXD's Musicogenic cobbles together elements from several related styles and provides a consistently engaging listen... or at least, that holds true on the five track promo CD I was given.  

The full version of Musicogenic apparently has fifteen tracks.  Fortunately, all of them are available for free listening at the band's official website, provided you have Flash installed (and a decent net connection).  I gave a couple a listen, and they seemed to be of similar quality to the tracks presented on the promo CD, but more techno and repetitive in nature.  Don't take my word for it, though.  Go listen for yourself if you're interested in this kind of stuff.

So what is 'this kind of stuff,' then?  Well, the smooth, clean vocals are what made me think of Peter Gabriel...  that and an upbeat sensibility absent from your average Teutonic technometal band.  Some tracks have a very 'rock' feel to them, while others delve more into the 'sound FX and intolerable looped vocal samples that sounded cool at the time' territory.  All of the music is exclusively synth-driven, but occasionally some heavy guitars pop in to vary the mood a bit.  The beats are propulsive, the melodies and choruses are catchy.  Electro metal!

Please forgive my vague generalization, but I got no press material with this and can't find info on the web, so hey.  Take what you can get.  I don't know who's in the band, or why this promo only has five tracks, or much else about MXD since their website is devoid of useful info and their label's site is completely broken at the time of the review.  What I -do- know is that MXD has some catchy songs that surprisingly held my interest while I listened to the promo.  A few of the tracks they have available on their site were... not so interesting. Since you can hear the whole album online, you might want to do that before deciding whether this enigma-wrapped-in-a-synthesizer is the right band for you.

Track List:
01.) Powder Mind
02.) Le Pire
03.) Clean-Ex
04.) Charlie Brown
05.) Defoliant
 

MXD Official Site:
http://www.mxd.ch

Equilibre Music:
http://www.equilibremusic.com

07/13/04