With God Of Hell THE RETROSIC should finally conquer the top of the Electro scene and it should be likewise clear what is reigning the dance floors next time. God Of Hell mostly consist of hits and club crushers, but offers at the same time necessary variety for the demanding listener yet catchy for the masses. Convincing with a nightmarish atmosphere almost lasting the entire album, is this the most perfect EBM CD I was listening to for ages.
God Of Hell kicks of with The Storm, a midtempo-paced song but driving and occasionally used quiet breaks. And once again one might sense out parallels to old :Wumpscut: as on earlier THE RETROSIC songs. But in the meantime they have polished their style, are more independent now and at this high level of quality one cannot speak of a plagiarism anymore. Maneater is an Electro song hard as bone, dark, whipping and inescapable. Even move-dyslexics as I am get started into fidget. New World Order is more open but suddenly captivates the listener in the middle never freeing up anymore. Especially the refrain is unbelievably haunting and mesmerising. The following Tale Of Woe slows down the pace a little and builds up an extremely dark mood, while Dragonfire offers another dark any heavy Electro fare with its low-down melodies and driving beats.
Those, who thinks that is still not enough variety will be downright surprised by Elysium: a song with elaborated percussion instruments and beautiful female singing, its oriental atmosphere almost reminds me of Dead Can Dance. Definitely one of the highlights on this album.
Total War offers again heavy and danceable material but followed by the only weaker song on this album. Also on other tracks THE RETROSIC do not reinvent the wheel or EBM respectively. They just manage to arrange, combine and tune known sounds and styles perfectly so that one can hardly elude the intended effect. Just on Antichrist this mixture does not work for me. What would be a better song on other releases is just average on this one by a direct comparison. The instrumental Sphere is again a felicitous track, captivating with a wonderful atmosphere and EBM-untypical drums. God Of Hell officially closes with the Sci-fi-like sounding outro Tears In Rain, followed by a unnamed hidden track, which is more a sound collage than a real song.
Moreover, there is also to find a bonus CD entitled Servant Of Hell, containing alternative versions of different songs and an unreleased track called Passion. Tale Of Woe is here much quieter with a medieval touch, Maneater is quasi the maxi version, Elysium appears as a pure instrumental and knows how to convince, while The Storm comes up with female classic opera-like singing, which is quite interesting, but not as good as the original. In the end Passion emerges as a very dark and sparely orchestrated song, as well with this opera-like female singing and just running for two minutes. Nice, but surely too weak as inducement to buy. Talking about the video on it to The Storm … this one got really great realised.
All things considered THE RETROSIC have produced an album being the reference in the harder Electro scene for next time, maybe for the next years. Fans of this kind of music cannot ignore God Of Hell! For me they scratch possible short of the highest score.