By Orren Merton

Apoptygma Berzerk's latest album, "Welcome To Earth," begins with voices discussing alien landings and their impact on civilization. From this, the title of the album, and song titles like "Starsign," "Eclipse," etc. you'd be forgiven if you thought this was a concept album regarding aliens. In fact, the alien references in this album pretty much vanish after the first half of "Welcome," and the concept is never explored in a "Bowiesque" ebullient, enthralled way, instead opting for a much more Radiohead like tone, where alien abduction is seen as a welcome cure to the ills of daily life on earth. In fact, that theme--the alienation of humans here--is much more of what holds the album together. Even the choice of cover song, "Fade To Black" by Metallica, fits into that theme nicely, along with song titles like "Paranoia," "Soultaker," "Help Me," etc.

Musically, this album is deeply saturated by trance style techno, as well as references to 80s bands such as U2, The Cure, Depeche Mode, etc. As a matter of fact, "Fade To Black" might be the most obvious example of this--the song is covered in an almost purist Goa trance style, with the piano riff from U2's "New Years Day" weaving in and out again, creating an at once recognizable, yet unique and original take on Metallica's classic.

The sound design becomes paramount in any techno/EBM/industrial style record, and in "Welcome" Stephen Groth does a great job of finding moving, cutting-edge tones...mostly. The intros to two songs, "Moment of Tranquility" and "LNDP3" sound very dated and cheesy; in fact, "Moment" borrows it's bass melody from a 1980 Cure song called "Funeral Party" - and the Cure song's keybords sound more contemporary! Luckily, those two songs happen to be fantastic, which is enough to overcome the lackluster synths.

In fact, that is probably the major strength of this Apoptygma Berzerk CD over their others--all APB albums end up with multiple tracks of obviously "filler" material, but on this song there is much less filler than the other CDs, and the techno energy renders even the less meaty songs punchy and listenable.

Overall, this is my favorite APB release to date. Groth's singing and songwriting is better than ever, the heavy infusion of trance is a welcome addition to the synthpop/EBM mix, and the sound is modern and moving. Hopefully future albums will capitalize on "Welcome To Earth's" strengths and carry APB to an even higher plateau.