More than most industrial bands, New York-based
Terrorfakt relies on texture to keep your attention. Well, texture and bludgeoning beats -- this is industrial music of the "You vill dance und you vill like it!" variety. The interesting textures and compelling beats are really pretty essential, because too many of their songs are relentlessly droning affairs that rarely venture from one- or two-chord progressions. So a remix album was an obvious choice.
Cold World Remixes brings together new mixes of tracks from the band's 2003 album
Cold Steel World, provided courtesy of such underground eminences as
Imperative Reaction,
Angel Theory, and Re_Agent. It also offers five previously unreleased tracks, all of which are interesting enough but sound like ideas that remain to be fully developed. The remixes are another matter, though. They vary in quality from the relatively straightforward and not terribly interesting Cervello Elettronica mix of "Achtung!" to the surprisingly spacy and funky Totateke remix of "Zero," and a similarly atmospheric reworking of "Hate Like This" by Displacer. Synth Etik provides another mix of "Zero," this one harsher but equally complex, while Pneumatic Detach gives "No Frequency" a strange and eerie treatment. Like most remix collections, this one is uneven, but it's a solid winner overall. ~ Rick Anderson