Pain Station: Anxiety
- Empty
- Vagrant
- Alone
- Perversion
- Closer To The Edge
- Feed Me
- Hate
- Dying
- Consumed
- Into My Brain
This is a well-crafted release with tight programming and is doubly impressive
in the fact that this is Scott's debut CD (although he has put out one exciting
demo as well). As revealed in the interview, the man behind Pain Station,
Scott Sturgis, has toned down the guitar usage and went with a slower tempo
than the material on his demo release. This creates a much more menacing and
darker effect as well as helping him create his own musical identity. In this
way he doesn't come across sounding just like an imitator of his various
influences -- which I would say was a slight problem with his demo material.
He definitely has a stronger comparison to high-grade European acts than much
of the standard fare in the states; he easily moves from powerful, angst-ridden
coldwave songs to ambient-soundscape stylings to tracks built around heavy
techno structures, while still managing a cohesiveness to the whole album. One
of the most impressive tracks on the disc, for me personally, was Alone' --
it's comes across with a very saddened and frustrated atmosphere; it's a song
that just about brought tears to my eyes, without being a sappy ballad. Which
comes to another strong point of the disc, Scott's lyrics. They're very
personal and open to interpretation; and he doesn't feel the need to rely on
over-used cliches to convey a feeling or belief to the listener. Tom Muschitz
of Alien Faktor/Decibel Records does most of the excellent production work on
the album (along with Chris Randall helping out on a few songs), but Scott's
strong musical abilities showcased on this album is more than enough reason to
pick up this disc. (Kevin Congdon)
Pain Station is: Scott Sturgis
Contact:
Decibel Records
615 N. Milwaukee St
Milwaukee WI, 53202
E-mail: decibel@execpc.com
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