Non-Stop Ride is a continuously mixed set helmed by
Godhead frontman Jason Miller with support from
Nitzer Ebb's
Julian Beeston. Using the mechanistic bleat of vintage EBM and industrial music, Miller hops fluidly between old and new material. He seems restricted to stuff that Cleopatra could actually license; however, the album moves along nicely, and is actually more danceable than its overdramatic cover art would suggest. Well, danceable if you believe PVC is a fashion statement. A snippet of Ogre's "Borderline" cover is enveloped by the insistent goth disco of "Shadow to Fall" from
the Damned's mid-'90s comeback album, remixed here by
Leæther Strip. There's quite a bit of
Prodigy happening, as both
Funker Vogt and
Haujobb turn in takes on
Fat of the Land material. As it turns out, both the former's "Narayan" and the latter's "Smack My Bitch Up" are pulled from Cleopatra's 2002
Tribute to the Prodigy. This lack of depth is
Non-Stop Ride's only glaring fault -- with all the Cleopatra-branded material (
Fear Cult doing
Blur?), the album could be seen as an elaborate advertisement for the label's back catalog. Curiously, there are also two tracks tapped from
Pigface's by-the-numbers 2003 effort
Easy Listening.... While the motives behind his song choices can be murky, Miller's mixing is consistently engaging. He uses a bed of repeated samples to weave the tracks together, and successfully balances darkwave gloom (
Pig's jarring "Rope," for example) with the groovy synth twitter and the rhythmic tick of industrial beats.
Godhead fans should also enjoy the three covers tacked onto the end of
Non-Stop, "Bela Lugosi's Dead," "Fascination Street," and
the Sisters of Mercy's "This Corrosion." ~ Johnny Loftus