Xotox - Gestern [Infacted Recordings]

Xotox is back and he's back with a bang. After signing to Infacted Recordings earlier this year German producer Andreas Davids a.k.a. Xotox presents his new album "Gestern", a fourteen track longplay piece accompanied by an additional bonus CD which includes the entirety of all mixes featured on the prequel single "UFO" - click on link for our review of this - plus five previously unreleased remixes of album tracks which makes this new release clocking in at around two hours of total overall playtime. Opening with "Sorgenkind", another single taken off the album prior to release, as well as the subsequent "Zeitgeist, Baby!" with its cold, highly compressed, futuristic and more technoid touch it is pretty obvious that we're entering a new phase of Xotox' work with this longplay piece. Still rooted in a history of stomping hard HardTechno, EBM and Industrial melodic elements become more prevalent, as well as a certain affinity for straight forward peak time Techno and Rave with a dark'ish twist - think groups like Empirion or the combination of Fixmer / McCarthy, Terrence Fixmer's first solo album "Muscle Machine", The Horrorist and the banging Industrial-driven sound of David Meiser's "Discipline For The Masses" 12" on AFU Limited and certain releases on labels like Aufnahme + Wiedergabe as more recent reference points within the dancefloor world, paired with ghostly, outerdimensional greyscale Techno desolation in album tunes like "Haunted" whilst cuts like "Ein Tagtraum Im Regen" are a perfect soundtrack to bang your head against a concrete wall... in vantablack darkness, total isolation and slow motion, over and over and over again. Furthermore pieces like "Standing On Top Of A Rusty Mountain" are harking back to a time in the 80s when (Proto)Techno and Industrial still bonded on one single dancefloor - think: Technoclub / Dorian Gray here -, "Wir Haben Die Wirklichkeit Zerstört" is classic, highly compressed Xotox brutalism in its purest form albeit with a surprisingly sexy groove foundation, "Das Falsche Licht" presents an uplifting variation of grinding Rhythm Industral HarshTrance and "Keine Angst" weighs in a proper take on flogging Industrial Hardcore garnished with harsh mechanical sounds, buzzing electronic basslines and braincell crushing off kilter madness just to pick a few favorites here. Remixwise we see Autoclav1.1. taking on "Die Neue Normalität" which results in a dreamy Future Industrial / Industrial  Trance monster , Stahlschlag caters a grinding, relentless rendering of "F*ck You Very Much" whilst "Zeitstation Bermuda *Retro-Version" is providing whipping poly-layered Industrial antigrooves on various tempo levels alongside many other unmentioned versions. Quite a banger of an album which hopefully will result in the long time overdue recognition of Xotox beyond the Industrial / EBM realm and finally take the German artist into the center of the storm of the Techno circuit.