DYNABYTE, 2KX (2010, self-released)

The skull:
This might have been a cool cover if someone had actually set out a skull and then projected their stupid blue gears-and-pipes collage onto it. Instead, probably a skull photo was poached from the internet and the industrial cliches were just Photoshopped in. I do like the attention paid to the teeth, though. They look nice.

The music:
Obviously, Dynabyte are industrial metal. The cover gives that away immediately. They’re like a slightly heavier KMFDM, with a little Pslam 69-era Ministry thrown in. Nothing too special, I’d say, although at their best (“Normal”, for instance) they almost approach early Pitch Shifter in quality. The female vocals, courtesy of Cadaveria, remind me a bit of early Genitorturers, although the cleaner singing is more nasal and less appealing. The growling is okay, though. Industrial metal, overall, should be a lot better than it is, but the truth is, for as simple as the ingredients are, almost no one does it properly, or at least to my tastes. It’s a genre of near-misses, of bands that never quite put the pieces together. For every Pitch Shifter, a dozen Drowns. For every Swamp Terrorists, a hundred Dynabytes. And that’s before you even start looking for the bands that out-and-out suck. But if that sort of thing appeals to you, like if you think Circle of Dust are awesome, and you own an Ugly Mustard album, then probably you’ll think Dynabyte are okay.
— Friar Johnsen