Music for the Massive

In 2000, Apartment 26 issued its debut LP, Hallucinating, an album heavily — heavily — influenced by the gimmicky cross-pollination of industrial and metal favored by aggro types like Orgy and Gravity Kills. A full four years later, Apartment has returned on a new label (Atlantic), with a new album (Music for the Massive), and a fully rehabbed sonic exterior. Tchad Blake seems to have been one of the foremen on this reconstruction project; he handles most of the production and mixing, as well as a few instrumental turns. He's also left the band's industrial foment intact, but it's been steamrolled into slick sheets of clicking, processed electronic mush. The result? White noise, blips, and smatterings of voices and synthesized instruments filling the gaps between Music's enormous, guitar-heavy loud rock choruses and its drifting, electronics-tinged verses. Blake and mixer Chris Lord-Alge have capably refitted Apartment 26's previous sound for 21st century marketability. There are a few odd attempts at fusing jazz and swing elements to aggressive nu-metal; "Give Me More" and "Book (Be My Friend)" sound like Filter covering Cherry Poppin' Daddies' "Zoot Suit Riot." "Stupid World"'s thick, buzzing guitar line is pretty catchy, while insistent processing cleanses its rhythms for maximum accessibility.