Go anywhere on the planet, you find most death metal bands innovating their style. Because, everyone realizes you can have a CC, Death, Obituary and Morbid angel once in an era. This, innovation driven movement has in fact produced remarkable results examining the likes of Nile or Hate Eternal. THE! Bands that have successfully imbibed fresh philosophies, ideas, instruments, techniques and playing style in their music that seem unmatched.

I’m talking all this not to compare Hypnosis directly to the above-mentioned greats, but to indirectly measure the line of demarcation of pushing limits. The French tri-band comprises of Cindy (G/V), Pierre (G/V and machines) and Patrice (bass). From the line -up itself you can make out, a drum machine drives their music. And as the album is called ‘Cyber death’ it positions to bring space age music together with fractured death metal. Call it industrial death (which is more thrash than death!) metal that has traces of fear factory or even chimara for instance. The synthetic mixing is done to perfection, but it’s strictly not meant for the conventional listeners. The place where it plays as a spoilt sport is the usage of background female (ish) vocals that are irrelevant and boring. Otherwise vocals are deep, low and heavy. The guitar sounds close to new ‘In flames’ tuning (which is quite meekly lean) combined with stuff from synthesizer and keys scarcely used at instances. All this could have been much more crispy, stretched and solid. However, no major folly yet, but where ‘Hypnosis’ absolutely fails is the inability to keep the listeners enthusiasm going. It most definitely, stumbles between those trancey cyber intros, interludes and outro’s and mainstream riffs .Its relatively gloomy and thought driven, but would have been a stunner effort without all those unnecessary things. ‘Give me hell’, ‘Bleed’ and ‘My cell’ are the better ones of the lot.

Since, I started the review discussing INNOVATION my question is-Why innovate too much? And kill the essence!