steering clear of the mainstream
since 2001

june 2010

review
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info opinion

Nothing Inside

"Decay" CD

DarkRealm Multimedia, Inc.

Genres: darkwave, industrial electronics

DarkRealm
PO Box 8521
Atlanta, GA 31106
USA

Mar 10 - 16  2003

It's hard to categorize Nothing Inside.  They play a sort of spooky, doom-obsessed electronic music that lands somewhere in the world of goth and darkwave.  It's an interesting mixture, and one that will definitely appeal to the goth and darkwave crowd.

The first song, "Wych," is composed of a dark background with various sound clips laid on top of it, including a sample of "Please press stop on your CD player."  This, of course, really tempted me into making a mean little zinger (eg. "Well, the samples sure are right about that!" <cue profuse laughter>), but there wouldn't really be any reason to, as Decay is a pretty good album.

A bit later comes the title track, a dark, moody tune that sounds kind of like part of the Super Mario World soundtrack, except with vocals and a less 8-bit sound.  "Tormentor" uses some synth bells in order to build a creepy, mysterious mood.  "Fragmentary Blue," meanwhile, has an eighties synthy sound, complete with vocals and an electronic chord background, and is actually pretty hummable.  As you can tell, these pieces are largely about mood, which Nothing Inside really excel in.  Although they do go for some pop songs ("Fragmentary Blue," "Yellow"), melody is not the primary concern here, which may limit Nothing Inside's audience.

All around, Nothing Inside have done a good job here.  Although some parts can get really repetitive (an example is the background of "Lost," which just rolls on and on and on), they seem to have mastered their style pretty well.  Decay is recommended to goth and darkwave fans; the music goes with the cover art, and their cover art is pretty darn good.

82%

Matt Shimmer

[Vitals: 14 songs, distributed by the label, released 1999]