Inferno

While more is often better in the world of industrial music — more speed, more guitars, more instrumentation, more BMP, more intensity — Project Pitchfork takes a step back in all of the preceding except for the last mentioned, which remains at a high level. The disc relies on moody synthscapes that show allegiance to the goth community that has embraced the group, with keyboards approximating unnatural sounding (but not unpleasantly so) strings and piano, led by Peter Spilles' monotone vocals sung in English and German with equal incidence. The result is almost psychedelic, thanks to a hypnotic effect that is otherworldly as well as grounded and, in the singular exception to the disc's departure from the band's past works, imminently danceable and overtly accessible even beyond the dancefloors. Bob Mould tried to make an electronica record with Modulate and it didn't work. Had he made this record instead — and with its keen sense of melody and rock dynamics, he probably could have — it would have. ~ Brian O'Neill, Rovi