Gig Review: Infest 2013

I just checked, and it has been 3 years since I last attended Infest. That is moderately appalling, considering it is my favourite UK electronic festival. Still, I went this year and now you get to read all about it. You are truly blessed.

I headed down to Bradford in good spirits if not rude health, almost perishing of dehydration on a train that was running the heating in the middle of one of the warmest British summers on record. I realise to any overseas readers that seems like borderline Arctic conditions, but you must remember that my genetics have gifted me with the equivalent of several walrus-hide overcoats in terms of body hair. Ladies.

Currently Infest retains the same layout as on its return to the revised Bradford Union venue a few years past, and while it maintains the same issues – stairs leading down to the front rows of the audience, a somewhat rambling multi-room layout – at this point I am detached enough from my nostalgic love of the old layout that I am beyond grumbling. Additionally it seems somewhat gauche to do so, since every other aspect of the festival is managed superbly. Copious bar and (non-intrusive) security staff, excellent timekeeping and a joyous compère in the form of Mr Tails all lead to a warm atmosphere quite unlike any other festival I have been to.

The Friday was launched in style by Metal Tech, a self-confessed 'kissdustrial' act who take on a '90s industrial rock sound before slathering it sexually in glam stomp and silly. They came, they threw out glowsticks and party poppers and they conquered. There are some serious musical chops going on with the construction of tunes, though the beats backing them could do with a bit of sophisticating. But maybe they don't want to. Maybe they just want to put on makeup and masks and make bitter muso twats like me grin, just a little bit, despite ourselves. Metal Tech closed with a German language number called 'Hammstein' that, if my Deutsch is standing up from GCSE, contained the chorus line “My little dancing pig”. That's worth the price of entry alone.

Long-running UK act Inertia followed. I have seen these guys a few times over the years and each time they strike me as almost getting close to attaining their own identity beyond borrowed beats and synths. This is the best I've seen them, but I still can't in all honesty recommend them. These days they come across as a bronze medal-winning Mesh, which could be fine if you don't have anywhere else to go. But before they are inevitably claimed by their eponymous emotional gravity well, it'd be nice to hear what just being Inertia sounds like.

Dive

Next up was Dive, solo project of Dirk Ivens – and this blew me away. One man, contorting on stage to a minimalist old school industrial/EBM fusion with noise elements. That sounds like a total grab-bag, but in practice it slots together so perfectly. The performance being centred entirely around vocals – all music was 'on tape', as they'd say back in the day – lent it a slightly surreal performance art vibe as Ivens beat his chest and addressed the audience via microphone and loudhailer. Constant slow white strobe accompanied the claustrophobic beats, flickering independent of the rhythm and helping to build what was undoubtedly an intense but approachable performance. Excellent musical construction, exquisite delivery.

Friday's headliners were Pride & Fall, a band whose futurepop/darkwave crossover material has never particularly grabbed me. This night was no exception. They seem to be trying for a melancholy poetry with their material, but for me every single stanza rhymes with 'boring'. It comes across as overwrought and self-indulgent, which is perhaps a criticism-by-numbers for a band who arguably fit under the incredibly broad umbrella of goth. But they just leave me rolling my eyes, despite an obviously professional live presence and an enthusiastic reception. More power to you if you still have the teenage flights of fancy to appreciate this stuff.

Two things were hammered into place by the first day of this year's Infest – firstly, this may have been the best sound I have ever heard at a festival. Aided by a superb sound setup, most of the weekend's bands (with one exception, noted below) were crystal clear from the front of the stage to the back of the crowd. Kudos to the engineers. Get out there are work every other festival I attend, please. Secondly, the second real strength of this festival year on year (after atmosphere) is the variety. Other alternative electronic festivals haul a bit of pick and mix on stage, but typically there is still an overriding sense of whatever is fashionable that year. Not so Infest. If you don't dig a particular sound, there will undoubtedly be something very different along in a minute.

And just to illustrate this, Saturday began with Manchester's AAAK – As Able As Kane if you like your capital letters spread out a bit – who come across as an energetic, defiant blend of old-school industrial and grebo. It's always a thrill to hear live guitars and drums as festivals such as these, and this year we were spoiled for them. A political kick wrapped in proto-Madchester punk sneer, AAAK 'ably' prove they 'kane' hold their own in good company. Punnage, motherfuckers. This is what life has driven me to.

Wieloryb are this year's contingent from veteran art noise label Forms Of Hands, and they play a blinding set of techno-tinged noise soundscapes, leveraged by a dynamic and infectious songcraft that pushes through the somewhat willfully difficult barrier many of their peers lurk behind. The end result is a dynamic, infectious and danceable set that stood out as powerfully unique to ears that are too often bored by the 4/4 crunchy beats of live noise acts. A melodic underpinning was provided on many tracks by what hacks like me tend to summarise as 'Eastern' vocal samples, which is about as effective a description as one would get describing every singer west of the Prime Meridian as 'Western' vocals. Still, you know what I mean, don't you? Yeah, you do. We're all going to hell. Except for Wieloryb, who are awesome. A mixed-gender duo also highlight something that struck me as extremely positive from this year's festival – a much higher number of women on stage who aren't there simply to dance or look pretty in uniform. This is a good thing, and laughably overdue. It's not a historical problem with Infest specifically, but one with the scene – and hey, the music industry as a whole – that can only have passed you by if you are either utterly ignorant of these things or an MRA asshole. If you are an MRA asshole, stop reading and pollute some other site. We don't like your kind round these parts.

Chrysalide

Next up are French trio Chrysalide, who stride onstage blackened and raw to deliver a festival-topping set of early '90s industrial power tempered in a crucible of 21^st century sounds and howling screams. Many comparisons have been made to Skinny Puppy, and while that is entirely accurate it struck me when watching how much these guys also sound like a gnarly, pissed off version of ohGr's solo work as well. Making comparisons seems somehow to undermine what Chrysalide do, since the shrieking violence of their performance comes as a breath of fresh air even over a weekend with as many quality acts as this one. It's all sweat, contortion and closed-eye bellowing over a bedrock of beats and synths forced open wide with a bloody, rusted ribcage spreader. If you can stand another band comparison, they come across as Mindless Self-Indulgence only created for rabid adults instead of attention-deficit-afflicted toddlers. Vital. Get yourselves on the bandwagon before it builds up full speed.

Typically after a set that explosive, the following act would struggle to build up a head of steam. But for new wave veterans Click Click, it's a chance to infect the entire venue with their slithering, creepy melodies that sneak softly inside your skull and perform unspeakably horrible, but consensual, sexual acts with your psyche. Frontman Adrian Smith - a withered Lex Luthor in Lennon glasses whispering secret things to the rodents under your bed – occasionally brings out random instruments to play into the microphone before tossing them over his shoulder with disdain, while his brother Derek pounds drums with stone-faced glee at the back of the stage. It's powerful and disturbing and oddly majestic. It has inspired me to raid their back catalogue thoroughly, and I would be surprised if many others watching were not doing the same even now.

Click Click

Controversial opinion for pretty much everyone else at Infest 2013: I didn't enjoy Da Octopusss much. European hard dance with pseudo-dubstep bits performed by two guys in gimmicky Cthulhu masks, their recorded material struck me as interesting enough with a degree of horror creep to it that at least somewhat justified the Lovecraft angle. But live... well, with a sonic/visual experiment that will blow your tiny minds, let me attempt to replicate the set for you.

BASS BASS BASS BASS BASS 

BASS BASS BASS BASS BASS 

BASS BASS BASS BASS BASS 

BASS BASS BASS BASS BASS 

BASS BASS BASS BASS BASS 

BASS BASS BASS BASS BASS

BASS BASS BASS

Seriously, have a bit of non-telegraphed dynamism. Was your father betrayed and murdered by treble? Have you sworn revenge? Are you even now polishing a dagger in a run-down Eastern European hostel room, weeping as you anticipate the joy of plunging it directly into the stomach of the cymbal unwittingly waiting for your violent attentions in a backalley absinthe bar populated by human traffickers and government informants?

Probably not, is the answer.

But of course everyone except me and a few others are left ejaculating with joy on the dancefloor. It's my own fault. I can't just like things for being things. I need some kind of existential reasoning. 

Fuck it.

Saturday's headliners were Imperative Reaction, a band I am most enthusiastic about on record. They peddle a distinctive brand of driving electronica that comes across to my ears as almost identical to '90s American industrial rock acts – the likes of Gravity Kills and the criminally forgotten Machines Of Loving Grace – only sacrificing traditional rock instrumentation for pulsating beats and synths. However, live they chose to represent their sound with limited synthwork and vocals backed by guitars and drums. This was, to my ears, an absolutely critical error. By translating your work into another genre framework, you really risk exposing the weaknesses of your songwriting within said framework. Imperative Reaction write great heart-pounding electronic anthems. They do not write great rock songs with added synth. It also highlighted that as a live rock act, they simply do not cut it. I'm sorry – and many rivetheads and cyberwhatevers might be left frothing in fury at this – but the standards are simply higher for live performance. Them's the breaks.

In the end it all reduced itself to a mushy mess with drums riotously pounded over the top, like someone a few seats away on the train listening to anonymous German techno while your earphones are pumping in metal-lite. The sound itself struggled to maintain it's weekend-long clarity, and I was left listening to my favourite song by them – the brainmelting asskicker 'Judas' – and shaking my head at the unrecognisable mess before walking away. A shame.

Autoclav1.1

Sunday opened with Yorkshire's own Autoclav1.1, whose live performances I have in the past considered to be sub-par to the recorded output, with too much emphasis on big beats and noise elements. OH GOD HERE YOU GO AGAIN, you think. Well, wrong. Dead wrong. Focusing far more on the strengths of the often disturbingly melodic and ambient elements of the sound, the performance was a lesson in the fragmented destruction of elegantly-weaved industrial soundscapes. Colourful and vivid visuals only served to augment the dreamlike quality of the music. A lack of sleep on my part doubtlessly helped provoke this, but Autoclav1.1 annihilated my brain-based cobwebs with aplomb. More of this, please.

Future Trail are next, functional but comfortable EBM traditionalists who are unafraid to mix their 1998 blueprint with 2013 sounds. Some elements of synthpop breaking through, but mostly a sound we have heard before and will hear again performed with workmanlike precision. Nothing spectacular, but potentially an act to watch in the future if they can find their own voice a little more.

It wouldn't be a UK alternative electronic festival without a spot of electro-industrial to make me swear under my breath and barely tolerate long enough to gather fuel for the review. And so I bring you XMH, who I suppose don't do anything wrong with the formula laid down by other acts. It's Suicide Grendel Tactical Commando Sekt, and they are here to goblinise your vocals and go UNK UNK UNK SQUEAL UNK UNK RAARGH. I shouldn't complain too much. They are certainly competent at what they do, and the frontman is undeniably energetic and providing a focal point for the crowd to get enthusiastic about. It's just a sound that is so ubiquitous as to be utterly irrelevant for me. Plus I am getting a bit sick of men standing on stage and screaming about bitches, sluts and whores like they're the next Andy LaPlegua. Issues much?

Sono

Sono are pretty much the opposite of electro-industrial, as a synthpop act with the emphasis on pop and a significant investment in huge quantities of melody. They seem pro as it comes, as well as delighted to be on stage – always a great combination – and frontman Lennart Salomon spreads his friendly enthusiasm to all corners of the crowd as they Depeche Mode it up with the best of them. There's some minimalism and hypnotic sensibilities at work that are enough to lift the songs up from merely fun pop tunes, and the end result is a more than solid addition to the lineup.

Cervello Elettronico are a surprisingly leftfield choice as the penultimate act of the weekend, and they reel out a set of refreshingly old-school glitchy techno sounds. While my bass-based criticisms over the weekend are mainly aimed at Da Octopusss, it's good to hear a beats-centered act that knows how to layer its material right up the scale to provide a sparsely lush experience. Slightly trippy, a bit evocative and ever-so accomplished.

Covenant

And then Covenant rolled on stage to detonate the venue. With their unique take on a synthpop/futurepop crossover they are an act that carry elements to appeal to most of the varied audience, and are one of the few acts who can get away with performing a festival set remarkably laden with more obscure tunes – including no less than three from their debut album “Dreams Of A Cryotank”, which I can comfortably say probably does not sit in the music collections of many folks in the crowd. I find myself in the odd position of not having much to say about Covenant. They are solid gold headliners, and they know it and play accordingly. A storming 'Call The Ships To Port' comes off the blocks with astonishing energy and only ramps it up in the now well-established blood-pounding instrumental kick that follows the chorus. The entire venue levels up and bursts into life. Light flashes, sound solidifies and a short time later everyone wipes themselves down and agrees that yes, that was A Very Good Thing.

I achieve approximately zero sleep that night (for no fascinating or controversial reasons) and rise at dawn to wend my way home. Somewhere nearby there is a wobbling, grinding beat of a party still going down. A few seconds later I realise that it's a broken extractor fan breathing its last.

And that's why I love Infest.

Bands Who Receive The Bastard "At Least 50% Of The Set" Live Seal Of Approval: 

Metal Tech, Dive, AAAK, Wieloryb, Chrysalide, Click Click, Autoclav1.1, Sono, Covenant

Gig Review: Damnationfest 2012

So it's that time of year again when I can write a review of a metal festival, post it, then link to it in as many places as possible so that a vast array of meatheads can email me and post comments to tell me LOL UR GAY GWAR WER AWESUM etc. Admittedly, Gwar didn't play Damnationfest this year. But you get the general idea.

Note for Damnationfest organisers: get Gwar in for next year. If there isn't any simulated sex onstage between bandmembers and people in penguin costumes, I'm not coming.

As always for a large multi-stage festival, this review comes loaded with the caveat that I am one man who quite enjoys standing or sitting in one spot for some length of time, and so I will be covering a small subsection of the 23 bands that played this year. You want me running around taking copious notes based on two tracks caught from each performer? Fucking pay me.

The festival itself was as well-structured and maintained as ever – set times were adhered to, there was a hefty merchandise and stall area, and the Student Union site allows for a thorough raiding of a small supermarket and bakery when alcohol and crushing noise just aren't enough. This more than makes up for the inevitable navigation nightmare that ensues in tight winding corridors when bands finish and their sweaty herd decides to take a stroll to another stage. Speaking of stages, a return to a larger stage layout from the last time I attended (2010, fact fans) was more than welcome. With The Refectory as the largest stage, sometimes it was even possible to attain breathing space in the audience.

So, music then. I kickstarted my day with the first band available – the brutal and incendiary Ravens Creed, who filter old school metal and thrash through a sludgey funnel to produce riffs so meaty that they bleed on their way out of the speakers. It is bastard heavy stuff, which fills the tight confines of the Eyesore stage in an extremely satisfying fashion. All this and a quick derogatory reference to hipsters before launching into a song titled “Stand Up And Be Cunted”. Recommended.

Ravens Creed

Next I wander along to the The Atrocity Exhibit, who peddle a fairly bog standard approach to crusty grindcore with strong death metal elements. It is technically accomplished stuff and there is, to turn a phrase, nowt wrong wi' it. But there's also nothing to particularly fire my enthusiasm. They come across as lineup-filler to my ears. If the genre is your bag, you might feel differently. Onwards to Hawk Eyes, the openers on the main stage. These guys probably fit comfortably into the post-hardcore bracket. But as discussed on this august site previously, who the fuck doesn't? This is Mike Patton worship at a fairly advanced level, melody and chaos being thrust at the crowd in equal measure. There are haircuts, but obviously some talent behind them. As a Leeds band they are carrying the local banner proudly, and certainly are in possession of a fine example of the Leeds alternative sound. I know what I mean by that. No one else ever seems to. What, you want clarity? Go read a mainstream site. I was tempted to stay and catch some more, but time was against me.

Hang The Bastard

And I was quite glad it was, in the end. It allowed me to catch a good chunk of the elegantly-named Hang The Bastard, who are probably the most polite sludgecore band on the planet. In a genre populated almost exclusively by heavily-bearded men who like to drink heavily and punch their fans in the face, it is refreshing to be addressed from stage in-between tectonic slabs of metal by a chap who speaks to a baying crowd like they are his girlfriend's mum. They do what they do very well – and let's not fool ourselves here, every sludge band on the planet sounds exactly the same. Variations on Eyehategod and Iron Monkey, rinse and repeat. It's a genre that wallows proudly in its influences, and while I usually find that cause for concern I'm happy to make an exception for the likes of Hang The Bastard. They have the requisite number of fat bastards, colossal grooving riffs and glass-in-throat gargling to make me a happy man. Another promising find.

Wodensthrone

Upon removing myself to the Eyesore stage again to see Wodensthrone, I find that in my absence a vast swathe of the attendees have engaged in asexual reproduction to form an impenetrable mass that I can only access via wedging myself between the bar, other stinking humans and a wheelchair access device. This is ridiculously uncomfortable, but I suffer through the incredible pain (probably more than you have ever experienced) to see a fair whack of the set. From my agonising position near the back of a low room with a grooved, curved ceiling and multiple open spaces to either side (detail I will throw in to make any sound engineers reading this bite the back of their hand in terror) most of what I can hear is a muffled cacophony of guitars and distorted keyboards. Using my sensitive and astounding critic powers, I can tell that Wodensthrone are something pretty damn impressive. Atmospheric, melodic black metal played right down the nose. The band themselves are obviously engrossed in their performance, which has a knock-on effect of drawing the audience in despite a relative lack of movement or extroverted energy onstage. Having lost several limbs in my contorted position, I retreat after catching enough of them to ensure they are a quality Jormungandr-bothering enterprise.

Blacklisters

The stage empties out significantly for the next band I catch, Blacklisters. Which is a shame, and probably largely because they fall under the aforementioned category of 'hipster' for the majority of metalheads attending. That's not to say they're not, mind. But if they are, then they are top-notch hipster entertainment. Spasming noise rock that doesn't sound a million miles away from an amped-up Shellac being fed into a woodchipper, the major flaw in a performance more physical than most is that they give off a palpable sense of too-cool-for-this that they get away with primarily because they are fucking good at what they are doing. They're probably a bunch of cunts, but that's kind of alright when their music makes every odd-numbered organ in your body leap twelve feet to the left.

Back to the main stage for Textures, a band I seem to not be able to get behind despite their influences being big favourites of mine. But I think that is largely the problem. It's all second-hand Meshuggah riffs alternated with melodic sections that sound like either Devin Townsend or Alice In Chains, depending on what the band felt like the day they wrote it. And trust me, I realise that sounds awesome. But in execution, it lacks something significant. While as a whole the songs sound polished and slick – which is to their detriment in and of itself – transitions between thundering djent and lofty melody are sudden, awkward and ill-timed. Truly less than the sum of their parts, Textures just come across as a fusion of different derivative elements. I will say this, though – they have a better stage presence as a whole band than any other act over the entire day. Shame about the music.

The next band I attempt to see are Bossk, but it becomes clear that actually getting into the Eyesore stage is more trouble than it is worth and may involve stabbing a good number of people to actually move forward ten or so feet. If I was a less charitable man I might claim that this was down to a great number of local scene pricks hanging out by the bar and talking over the music in a pathetic attempt to accrue points for being there. But I am nothing if not charitable, so let's move on.

Gama Bomb

Gama Bomb take to the stage some time later, and it is clear that they have quite a following for a band halfway up the lineup. I can see why, too. Kind of. They play thrash metal on the punkier end of the spectrum, full of lyrics about zombies and evil and haha what a jolly lark it is to be in a metal band blah blah blah. Which I admit is probably very appealing if you're not me, and therefore crippled by cynicism and pretension. The band themselves are clearly as happy to play as the crowd are to hear them, and almost completely defuse any criticism I might make of them playing derivative mediocre material with a 'comedy' spin (the inverted commas are because to produce successful comedy, you need actual jokes and not just to write songs about daft things) by reading out amusing critiques of them - containing sentiments much the same as what I was thinking while watching - to the audience, and remaining pretty self-aware of their limitations throughout. So well played, Gama Bomb. I didn't particularly like you, but now feel like a bit of a dick for it. Well played.

Primordial

Next up on the main stage are Primordial, who are one of the only bands I have failed to research or listen to before arriving. Yes, I research these things. I'm not some bequiffed and tattooed wanker who thinks their cache as a critic is largely linked to how many bands they can get wasted with and whose copy is littered with basic factual errors about genre and sound. I am a proud unpaid professional and none of you are worthy of kissing my damn feet.

But I digress, slightly. Primordial. I had no idea what to expect, which may have been a contributing factor to how impressed I was. Which was very. Highly melodic blackened doom with sub-operatic vocals (that's a compliment, folks) performed like road-hardened veterans. Frontman Alan Averill – yeah, I've done my research now – herded and drove the crowd like a master, splattered with Jackson Pollock corpse paint and unafraid to bellow slightly ridiculous metal banter at the crowd without the slightest sense of irony. Galloping riffs underpinned by atmospheric breakdowns, all wolves and blood red stars and moonlight glinting off blades.

Lovely stuff.

My Dying Bride

So onto My Dying Bride, who I had not been particularly anticipating despite being a big fan. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because I have seen them a number of times before, perhaps because it has been 6 years since they released an album that really impressed me. Either way, by strolling onstage and giving the best performance of the day they left me pleasantly surprised. A newly-shorn Aaron looked like some kind of ascetic hermit as he stalked onstage and writhed around in torment to their definitive brand of gothic doom. I would hope the torment is pretty much faux, after all these years. Otherwise the poor lad must have an awful time of all these immortal unfulfilled desires and eternally lost hopes. Either way, My Dying Bride forced a wonderfully miserable setlist down our throats. Highlights included a three-in-a-row blinder of “Like Gods Of The Sun”, “To Remain Tombless” and “She Is The Dark” that was without a doubt the best twenty minutes I've had in quite some time. No sniggering at the back.

Pig Destroyer

Main stage headliners Electric Wizard emerged a short time later to a psychedelic backdrop and immense rolling feedback that gave way to monolithic riffage. They're quite heavy, quite slow and they like Black Sabbath a fair bit. Not much else needs to be said, really. Especially since I left their set about 15 minutes in (which means I only heard about one-tenth of a song) to go see Pig Destroyer headline the Terrorizer stage. The cerebral grindcore heroes were the main draw of the festival for me, so I arrived there in anticipation despite the lethargy of the teetotal festival-goer and my natural sense of almost complete contempt for everything. When they finally kicked off somewhat late, it quickly became apparent that the sound in the main crowd pit was pretty damn abysmal. So I moved to a higher balcony, where the sound was undoubtedly improved. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the problems with the set. While it sounded better up high, J.R. Hayes vocals were still a muffled croaking mush. I get that in grindcore that is kinda the standard anyway, but it came across as technical rather than stylistic. The band themselves seemed fairly nonplussed at being there, spending most of their time rocking back and forth on their feet and looking at each other. There was little to no crowd interaction, each song was bookended with about two minutes of either silence or keyboard/sampler noise and after the first ten minutes or so there was a noticeable steady bleed of audience members out from the room.

Quite a few of them wearing Pig Destroyer shirts, which is never a good sign.

I am actually still struggling to reconcile what I thought of this gig with the obvious violent bliss many were feeling down in the main pit. There was a veritable tsunami of bodies rolling back and forth down there, and I wonder if from my lofty physical and emotional perch I wasn't getting it. But all I can do is call 'em as I see 'em. And the band seemed as bored as the members of the audience who weren't kicking the shit out of each other. Once a long technical problem halfway through soaked up a lot of set time, the number of tunes that actually got played was pretty pathetic. After accounting for a late start, an early finish, a technical gap in the middle, an unwarranted departure for an encore and healthy amounts of absolute nothing inbetween two-minute long songs, I'd estimate that Pig Destroyer played between twenty and twenty-five minutes of music in a headlining set.

Not good enough. Nowhere near. Especially shortly after having seen Primordial and My Dying Bride, both of whom performed headline-quality sets in standard slots. All this and no “Mapplethorpe Grey” or “Carrion Fairy”. A big fat hefty 'meh' for the my main draw of the festival.

And yet I left feeling thoroughly satisfied. Overall, it represented a fucking solid day of extremely obnoxious music. Chalk another one up for the Damnationfest team. Bring on next year.

Game Review: The Secret World (Five-Day Trial Thoughts)

Format Played: PC

As no doubt all of you out there are aware, it's really difficult to review an MMO. I'm sure you're nodding your heads furiously. Most of you have probably tried your hand at it, since we're in the 21^st century and therefore slaves to pointless technology.

Inevitably the depth and sprawling content of a high-profile MMO cannot be devoured fully without a few months of commitment, and the information that influences your opinions may well be partially or fully obviated the next time an update or expansion kicks in. I'm fairly convinced that writing an MMO review in the first six months of release is utterly pointless, since that seems to be roughly how long it takes for the bugs to be ironed out and the playerbase to settle happily into its routines of grinding, griefing and massively over-reacting on the game forums.

And even when things have settled down, gamechanging expansions can slip into place that make any review useful only as long as it takes for the developer to open up a new game zone where players can play magical alien toasters and thus open up the crafting system to baked products.

With that in mind, here is a pointless two month-in quasi-review of The Secret World. This has been inspired purely by their lovely five day free trial offer, which seems to set no limits whatsoever other than time, and also seems to be hitting the general public early – no doubt brought forward by an apparent low number of initial subscribers and the slow creeping realisation at Funcom that opening up an MMO without a free-to-play model is a shockingly foolish thing to do in the current economic and gaming climate. Especially when your not-quite-AAA game charges more than the likes of World Of Warcraft, EVE and The Lord Of The Rings Online. And especially especially when you release your game in the run-up to the largest clusterfuck of AAA MMO releases in quite some time – with Guild Wars 2,, Warcraft's Mists Of Pandaria and LOTRO's Riders Of Rohan all looming heftily on the horizon like some kind of giant subscriptionless panda on a horse.

It's irrelevant to any review of The Secret World as to what they decide to charge to play it, though. If it is your kind of entertainment then any remotely reasonable price is worth paying, whether it be a subscription or a one-off payment. I have often been baffled at the puzzlement of the more mainstream gamer over people paying monthly for an MMO, before toddling off to town and slapping down £40 for 3-4 hours of modern military shooter action. £10 per hour of entertainment vs. £10 per month of entertainment. Mathematics solves all arbitrary arguments!

I suppose I should actually start talking about the game here, then. With the caveat that I have played 5 days worth of it, reached the second map of the first zone and played around to a minimal degree with different character builds. Prior to downloading it my overriding notions from reading other media were that it had been praised for the setting, the writing of Ragnar Tørnquist and that the classless system had received lots of attention prior to release but not much after the public actually got their hands on it.

In a startling break from the norm, I am here to tell you that the setting and writing are great and the classless system is a little bit lacklustre.

But the setting and writing are really good. Really, really good actually. Good for a video game in general, let alone an MMO, which is a genre often plagued by an overabundance of boar quests and massive spiky shoulderpads. Within The Secret World you play a newly imbued practitioner of the martial magic arts, recruited by one of three covert factions who manage to break free from the conspiracy theory cliché that surround them to become genuinely interesting allegiances in a three-way cold war over who exactly gets to curbstomp evil.

Just an average London home.

There are The Illuminati, somewhat eschewing their usual sinister tendencies to become fun-time fratboy political manipulators. The Templars, who leaven their goody-goody natures with a touch of stuffy class prejudice and lovely old-fashioned fascism. And finally the Dragon, who are arcane chaos mathematicians blending magic with scientific experimentation to discover the best path to the future. All of them have impressively constructed hub cities that bleed atmosphere, especially the Templar launchpad of London which is a skillful blend of London Below, crime drama cliché and Diagon Alley. Although as with the other zones the whole 'secret society' theme is somewhat clouded by the seeming high level of knowledge that everyone outside of the societies possesses about them. It's tough to work up a sufficiently spooky feeling about getting inducted into the centuries-old Templars when they are getting name-checked in the local pub and have massive banners outside their gaff advertising their presence. On the whole though, the environmental design and writing more than makes up for this.

Oh yes. The writing. I have not had the pleasure of playing a game written by Tørnquist before, but my hopes weren't high. The kind of writing that is favoured by the average gamer (let alone MMO convert) is not my kind of writing, and usually involves protagonists called Wolf Hawkenblade or something. So I was hugely surprised when his characters started off on dry, amusing and Whedon-esque pop culture-heavy monologues that I was actually interested in hearing. They manage to pull you into the game, provoke a few giggles and build a slimy horror atmosphere all at the same time. The Secret World had the potential to be a very po-faced place, and the characters you meet and their witty opinions on the awful things happening around them help to ease you in smoothly. Though there is in fact a character called Wolf. Oh well. I'll let you off, Funcom.

In fact, the excellence in execution of a seemingly incongruous blend of humour and horror in a darker-than-real-life setting initially made me feel like I was playing Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines as an MMO. That's a hell of a compliment.

It's just a shame that there is no way for you to actually interact with said characters other than listening to their opening quest or cutscene monologues and clicking on them for extra flavour speech. Your trusty avatar remains stoic and mute throughout, which while no doubt cutting down on the problems engendered by introducing actual roleplaying into an MMO (as seen in The Old Republic, where a brave attempt by Bioware results in little-to-no actual consequence on personality, quests or plot) does also leave you oddly disconnected from the supposed conversation. Even a stock male/female character voice without any dialogue choice might have helped with this. Though if any MMO was screaming out for actual roleplaying and plot choice, it would be this one.

The campest swift travel in town.

The (secret) world itself is bloated with detail and exceptional mood-setting touches. In-jokes for horror and pop culture afficionados abound. Lore pickups are strewn across the landscape and deliver information to you about areas, history and factions piece by piece until you have the whole sordid story. The first zone proper is set in what can charitably be called a Lovecraft pastiche, an island town off the coast of Maine called – ahem – Kingsmouth. A fog has rolled in off the ocean and brought with it horrible aquatic monsters that go about converting the inhabitants into rabid zombies. All three factions promptly send their operatives into the ensuing survivalist warzone, and before long you are gallivanting around town wasting the undead and their fishy chums. It has been said elsewhere that later zones are not as engaging as the first, and given how superb this first one is I am not surprised. And it's lucky that it is a pleasure to navigate, because swift travel is extremely limited. You're going to be running around. A lot.

Solomon Island, and Kingsmouth itself in particular, is swarming with a beautifully blended mish-mash of traditional and 21^st century-horror that leaves no bones unturned. Lovecraft fish monsters? Check. Resurrected cultists of unclear and unsavoury nature? Check. Weird new age religionists of uncertain motive? Check. Historical mass graves indicating some appalling past the town would rather forget? Check. Witch trials, mining fires, animated scrap golems, mud monsters, supernatural serial killers, haunted woods, kids fighting the forces of evil from a secret treehouse, Native American burial grounds, Men In Black, portals to hell, sinister occult mercenaries and remote-controlled plane perverts. All this and a pair of dogs called Tango and Cash. There is so much going on that the nuance and overall plot could very easily get lost amidst several seasons of The X-Files happening at once, and it really is a huge tribute to the writing team and designers that focus remains in firm control for a gamer who pays sufficient attention.

This is strongly aided by the design decision to severely limit the number of quests that can be carried out at once to the main story mission, one main mission, one group mission and three side missions. These probably require some clarification in and of themselves. The main story mission seems to be identical across all three factions, and is tied in to resolving the dark events happening across the zone in general. Main missions are split across the regular smack-up-the-mobs fare of typical MMOs, sabotage missions that incorporate stealth and escort mechanics and investigation missions that provide a cerebral challenge. There are also infrequent main missions delivered straight to you by a faction member when you manage to rank up within said faction, providing a minor sense of narrative difference between the three. Side missions are picked up from environmental objects and often contain a short but flavourful story unto themselves, rarely straying into the straight collect-'em-up mentality of MMO quest filler.

Main missions in general are handled via a set of progressive tiers capped with reporting back in to your faction via a text hand-in that removes the need to return to the NPC who gave you it in the first place. This, in combination with the mission limit, makes sure that you focus on the progression of one story and keeps your character flowing in one direction with no need for backtracking – which fits right in with the atmospheric, story-telling strengths of the game. However, this also means that missions often end with no sense of resolution regarding the bloke or gal who handed over the mission to you in the first place. Are they pleased with what has happened? Horrified? Strangely aroused? You'll never know, which is a shame given how well they are rounded out in their mission-granting monologues. Also, if you want to pick up a follow-up mission from them (albeit they only stock one or two missions in total, though most are repeatable should you wish to indulge in grinding) you will have to head back to them anyway.

Many players, enjoying a transport hub & chatting in random abbreviations.

The tier system means that even combat-heavy missions have a sense of story to them, and this is exacerbated for the investigation missions where your lateral thinking and puzzling abilities will genuinely be put to the test. If you're after a bit of mindless clicking producing that sweet endorphin high, these are not for you. They variously include object puzzles, scavenger hunts, scrutinising in-game images for details, hunting for real-life information and trawling fake faction sites set up by Funcom for the purposes of secreting data in amongst flavour information. It's all very fourth-wall destroying, and an utterly fantastic notion that seems so simple as to be obvious in our world of viral marketing nonsense. Some of these are tricky stuff, and I don't mind telling you that I was stumped to the point of Googling for spoilers on more than one occasion. Each time I regretted not just giving it more thought.

A contrast to the superb investigation missions are the frankly half-implemented sabotage missions, which commit the cardinal sin of introducing stealth mechanics into a game that has not been designed with them in mind. Negotiating laser grids, security cameras and such often proves to be raw luck combined with trial and error rather than skill and execution. This is made more frustrating by the one strike and dead mentality that pervades them, with rooms blowing up once you make a single mistake. That doesn't seem like effective planning for a monstrous secret society to me. Contracting and rebuilding costs alone would put them perpetually in the red.

As a whole the game seems to put a great focus on solo play – in the opening area of the Solomon Island zone there was a grand total of one group dungeon (the only type of group mission, as far as I can see), and open enemy tapping ensures that if you help out someone being smacked around by a huge crab monster you are liable to receive thanks rather than be screamed at for losing them valuable XP. There's an ongoing wrangle over this solo-friendly trend within MMOs, and one that I can see both sides of. But for something as immersive as The Secret World, it feels more appropriate than in many other games. Indeed, a strong argument could be made that this would actually have made a much better solo or co-op game than an MMO. If a similar non-MMO followup was made, I would certainly snap it up without question.

So what do we have so far? Great world and story-telling plus an intriguing mission system that just about edges past the line of its own flaws to feel refreshing and engaging. That pretty much leaves character building and combat. Which is where we start to falter and wheeze, carrying the weight of more than a decade of MMO convention.

Much was made of the classless and level-less system of character progression before release, but both of these prove pretty much to be non-starters. A character progresses via building of Skill and Ability points through an experience bar, picking up chunks of the tasty XP stuff via killing nasties, completing missions and gathering achievements and lore. This is traditional levelling up without a number attached to it, which only serves to confuse. Tagging missions with 'normal', 'hard' and 'very hard' based on your current ability and skill levels is all well and good, but it lacks nuance. If my invisible levels matter, I would much rather know exactly where I stand and what is expected for someone entering into a mission before I pick it up. Due to the nature of the ability system, levelling certainly matters less than in other MMOs – but it is still a big deal, and when something is a big deal in a game I want it to be as clear and transparent as possible.

The Ability Wheel, in all its wheel-like glory. 

Skills in The Secret World are possibly the most futile and uninteresting character progression system I have ever encountered, based primarily around very small incremental increases to your damage and survivability while also allowing you to equip better gear. Both are something that are just done for you upon achieving another level in most MMOs, and here assigning them just feels like dull busywork. Abilities are slightly better and come loaded into an ability wheel that is divided down via a choice of nine weapons (a mix of ranged and melee weapons and magic styles) that your character can diversify into. At any one point you can carry two weapons and thus utilise abilities from their wheel spokes, but if you are prepared to do some switching around then your actual ability choices are completely unlimited. Character decks are provided for guidelines on how to build effective character builds, but as pseudo-classes they remain open.

At any one time you can have 7 active abilities (i.e. combat attacks and buffs/heals) and 7 passive abilities (augmenting combat attacks and buffs) out, though these can again be switched at any time out of combat. All of this has the potential to lead to a fantastic and versatile combat/grouping system, but for several problems. The first is that the holy trinity of tank, healer and DPS is still there in full force. You can branch out into some element of crowd control or debuffer but the limited number of abilities you can utilise at one time makes you a one- or two-trick pony. Your role in a group (or your solo play technique) will largely be defined by the abilities you choose to stack, and while it is good that a player feels like they are defining their build themselves it would be very easy to construct a broken character or an ineffectual ability deck. This is easily remedied through free restacking, but it still jars that value judgements have to be made between abilities that on first glance appear broadly similar.

I suppose that smacks of laziness, but the abilities my primary character gained upon a few days of progression really didn't seem all that different. I was just hitting nasties with my hammer in a slightly different animation, with no sense of change or power increase. A couple of abilities I had to wade through on secondary spokes seemed actively worse than my starting ones, and many others differed only in about 8 points worth of damage per hit against foes running up to 4/3k in health points. It was all a choice between hit 'em, hit 'em slightly harder and hit' em less hard but get a protective buff for 8 seconds. That is even less interesting to play than it is to read.

Smacking fish monsters with glowing magic mining picks - surprisingly dull.

All this is exaggerated by the fact that while it is obvious Funcom were going for a more action-based combat than your average MMO (limited ability decks, dodgeable telegraphed enemy attacks, chunky brightly-coloured ability icons), in execution it provides a hell of a grind. It is a genre blend that others have attempted recently - DC Universe Online springs to mind - and it is most definitely yet to be perfected. The majority of mobs take a good 30 seconds to a minute to bash through solo by rotating between two or three attacks, and you inevitably find yourself weaving around the ones you don't have to engage within an hour of starting play. Given the effort that has gone into engaging the player in the rest of the game, this is highly disappointing. On the occasions when you fight a whole bunch of weaker opponents the combat becomes much more acceptable – enemies go down faster, the usually more visually impressive AOE damage abilities become appropriate and the combat as a whole often resolves itself quicker. And considering that the strengths of the game lie in exploration and atmosphere, there are a hell of a lot of areas that are so swamped with mobs that you stand no chance of strolling through them solo without a lot of careful fighting or frustrating dying.

Speaking of dying, are we really still using the whole navigate-back-to-your-body-as-a-ghost thing in 2012? Really, are we? Astonishing.

There are various other bits and pieces to round out the typical MMO roster of features, but from limited play they don't seem to offer anything new. Item augmentation and crafting, guilds (termed cabals here), achievements for killing 100 of a thing, limited PvP and suchlike. I'm fine with these things, but from what I saw they don't rock my boat enough to go into any detail here. Gear is limited to talismans and weapons, and seems less numerous than in many similar games, with only 7 talisman slots at my character's paltry current level. Appearance is based on outfit rather than gear itself, which makes for a pleasant change and is appropriate to the setting. Information on gear, stats, how to pick up lovely new outfits and the wardrobe itself are both poorly explained by a help system that is by turns very useful and massively useless. 

In addition, the build is still buggy from launch. I encountered two in partiular more than once – the tendency for a doorway or object spawn to simply no-show, thus stalling you on a mission tier with no easily apparent option to quit the whole mission and start again. Even when transplanting with a new main mission and thus 'pausing' the bugged one, when unpausing I was still stuck on the bugged tier. I am sure a workaround exists, but given my limited time I simply moved on. In a way more frustrating is the tendency for mini-bosses to dash off a short distance and reset to full health, sometimes dependent on your moving outside a poorly demarcated area and sometimes just seemingly at random. It is somewhat churlish to complain about non-gamebreaking bugs in a game as unbelievably complex as an MMO, but two months after launch these are major items that should not be cropping up so frequently.

So that's my five days with The Secret World, more or less. It is an odd and uneven gaming experience, but also one with unique strengths for the genre. I suspect it'll be a game that builds an extremely loyal and setting-obsessed fanbase (of which I may well end up one, being a sucker for story and atmosphere), especially if the less appealing quirks are smoothed out via tweaks, expansions and a well-executed free-to-play system. That might be optimistic, given the recent flurry of unhappy news regarding its ongoing development from Funcom. Still, in these days of photocopying Warcraft into different IPs, The Secret World is to be applauded for providing something genuinely different. If you're after a solo-friendly MMO that will spin a great yarn for you in a brilliantly detailed environment, this may be for you. Although ironically, given the focus on solo play, you might get the best out of the game by duo-ing up with a friend. That way you can chew through the endless mobs with due haste while arguing over which ancient occult tome you have just Googled holds the clue to finding the forbidden labyrinth of the fish-people. And I actually can't imagine a better way to spend a Saturday night than that.  

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Well, this is going to be an interesting review to write. These days most movies come packaged in an excitingly huge and shiny cardboard box made of reconstituted hype and nonsense, but it’s rare for genuine expectation to find itself saddled to a blockbuster superhero flick. Everyone is usually too jaded, too flooded with media and too brutalised by box office turds to set their expectations very high even when all the signs are positive. That’s why no one was particularly surprised when the likes of Prometheus or Avatar hit home with very mixed receptions. Disappointing is the new black, and as an audience our current default setting is one of post-modern cynicism.

The Dark Knight Rises hype machine beat all that off with a nail-studded stick. I don’t know anyone who was intending to see this at the cinema that wasn’t looking forward to it with a feverish enthusiasm bordering on fanaticism. Admittedly, I know a lot of nerds. But I maintain that the general feeling was that this was going to be something special, a superhero movie that stood a chance of eclipsing its predecessors and wrapping the Nolan Batman trilogy into a neat little best-ever-cape-series package.

Well, it has done the latter. There’s no disputing that between them, these three films summarise the story of Batman into an extremely satisfying  tale with multiple distinct character arcs, loaded with subtext and imagery that make them some of the only movies capable of hitting the brain as hard as they hit the guts. In many ways The Dark Knight Rises is closer to a sequel to Batman Begins that the second film was – it carries over a lot of similar themes, as well as offering a continuation of that original narrative that I will desperately try not to spoilerise within this review.

What it has not done is step up the trilogy’s game. Now, should that be a criticism? Honestly, I don’t know. But when the second film in a series aces the first (which was already pretty firmly the best film of its genre ever made), one can’t help but feel some mild disappointment when the third film pulls back to quality of Batman Begins. Is The Dark Knight Rises good? Undoubtedly. Is it worth seeing, and worthy of being the conclusion of the Christian Bale as Batman saga? Oh yes.

But if what follows seems to have an excess of negative spin on it, now you know why.

We return to Gotham eight years after the devastating events of The Dark Knight, and immediately are thrown into an environment both familiar and alien. This is the Gotham and the characters we have seen before, but swaddled in inertia and neutered by past decisions. This inertia spills out onto the screen, to the point where the film feels like it takes a good hour to get up and running. It’s definitely a slow burn rather than an immediate cackling blaze of fury – albeit a slow burn that eventually rolls into an intensity that is as uncomfortable as it is adrenalising.

As with the previous films (and most of Nolan’s work in general), the ensemble performances are off the chart for something which is nominally a summer blockbuster. More than ever before, Bale’s Batman shines as a man broken into the shape of fear and justice by events beyond his control. Tom Hardy proves to be an inspired choice for Bane, an immediate fusion of cerebral and physical intimidation whose cold and clinical voice terrifies without ever raising itself above a barely-audible mechanical whisper. Anne Hathaway is also surprisingly effective as Selina Kyle (the name ‘Catwoman’ never actually escaping past anyone’s lips), languidly providing the manipulative not-quite-amoral slink that is required for the role. And it’s difficult to over-exaggerate just how refreshing it is to see a portrayal of the character outside the seminal 1990’s animated series who isn’t just defined by her sexual overtones. Into both , the writers have introduced a 99%-er sensibility that makes it difficult not to agree with their aims, even when decrying their methods.

The mostly unsung heroes of the trilogy have, however, always been Michael Caine’s Alfred and Gary Oldman’s Jim Gordon. Both continue to turn in powerful and subtle performances, though Oldman has much less to do in Dark Knight Rises than he has previously. Alfred, on the other hand, proves to be the furiously beating emotional heart of this final third. It makes for less of the easy humour and comradely banter that marked the relationship between Wayne and his primary father figure before, but leads to some genuinely devastating emotional moments. This will be the only superhero film of the year you might shed a tear for.

Cast aside, Dark Knight Rises runs a genuine risk of losing its way on several occasions through the lengthy running time. Incorporating multiple character threads throughout (though unlike The Dark Knight, always keeping Batman front and centre), sometimes these people seem to be revolving around each other rather than genuinely connecting. That isn’t the case across the board, and it’s not enough that you fail to care about them at all. But as an example, try as I might I couldn’t build up much empathy for new guy Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s earnest cop. As the film strolled onward, this left me in an awkward half-engaged posture due to the eventual importance of the role he plays. These are good characters in bad situations but often there’s just nothing to hook me in within this part of the trilogy. That’s less important for the characters who have jumped aboard two films ago, but when Nolan puts the onus on the newbies (of which there are quite a few), the ground just doesn’t seem solid. Perhaps it’s because almost everything within the film is a gamechanger.

It really, really is.

If Batman Begins was the taut origin story and The Dark Knight was the Heat-style hero vs. villain character study, then The Dark Knight Rises is the epic disaster movie. There is awe here with a capital A. Certain setpieces will make your jaw drop and your heart race, no two ways about it. This can partly be laid at the door of the cinematography, which is superb. Every single shot has been crisply assembled to be pitched at the audience in just the right way to deliver.

But when so much sweeping change is thrown at you right off the bat, it’s hard to keep up. You have no time to become invested into a status quo before it is twisted and turned around. Said twists are never illogical Shyamalan-style cheats, but there is an over-reliance on MacGuffins and flinging the surprises/dramatic changes at you faster than a speeding bullet. How’s that for crossover DC referencing, folks?

Speaking of DC referencing – if you are a comic book geek like me, there is much here to love. In the same way that Ledger’s Joker unconsciously took elements of most of the Clown Prince Of Crime’s portrayals from the last 30 or so years and melded them together into a horrifically joyous whole, Nolan rams picture-perfect versions of Catwoman and Bane onto the screen for your enjoyment. It’s especially satisfying given they’ve been done so very, very wrong before now. And if you are familiar with the definitive Batman/Bane story arc from the latter’s first appearances, a confrontation halfway through will be extremely gratifying. That’s veering dangerously close to spoiler right there. But only if you’re a massive Batman nerd, in which case you’ve probably already seen it. So that’s ok.

This has rambled on too long already.

So, The Dark Knight Rises. Has it arrived like a swooping bat-shaped thing from the darkness to save us from the generic bilge that infests the summer blockbuster release schedule? Yes. Has it upped the ante from the superb dynamics of The Dark Knight and set the bar still higher for the trilogy’s swansong? Not really, no.

Does that actually matter? Mileage may vary. For me, no. The Batman trilogy created by Nolan & co. is best viewed as one coherent whole, and as a conclusion to that whole this film does the job – and does it very well. It is a film that makes you feel and think and want to punch bad guys all at the same time, while wrapped comfortably around themes that capture the public zeitgeist with an almost impossibly casual ease. Any disappointment I had while walking out of the cinema felt like it was essentially my fault for being a curmudgeonly overanalysing prick. When that’s internalised rather than being shouted at me by other people, it must be a sign of something. If this third part of Nolan’s Batman feels to me like a weak link in the chain when viewed in isolation, it is still one that makes the chain stronger.

Movie Review: Prometheus

Unusually, the internet seems to have been somewhat coy about Prometheus in terms of spoilers. The trailers and previews were castigated for giving away too much plot, too many setpieces, too much of Noomi Rapace's perma-shocked expression.

In a token effort to honour that, I will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible. But that's going to be difficult,because trying to explain why something is an absolute unholy mess the first thing you need is precise examples.

And Prometheus is a mess. Oh, it really is.

So. A pick n' mix team of scientists, space pilot types and corporate manipulators go on a three year voyage to a distant moon in order to meet some mysterious aliens they think are potentially responsible for creating life on Earth. Or just humans. It's not too specific, really. They get there, mild disaster ensues, things happen in a randomly selected order. The whole thing is a sort-of-prequel to the Alien franchise, inasmuch as it is supposedly set a fair way before it and has events tangentally linked to the first discovery of the xenomorph by the crew of the Nostromo.

CGI is thrown at the viewer with enthusiasm, in an unsurprising move for a sci-fi movie in 2012. Said CGI is pretty well put together, and visually is a striking mix between the visuals of the Alien trilogy (shut up, it's a trilogy - the latest three films were horrible cheese hallucinations I had) and somewhat generic-but-pretty sci-fi fare. It suffers slightly from the Star-Wars-prequels-syndrome of looking like technology is much further along years before the events of the original movies, but given that (a) we're a long way from the audience expectations of 1979, and (b) the ship in Alien was meant to be a crappy tug and not a top class scientific research vessel - I don't mind too much. There are far bigger holes to plug. Not to mention that nowadays, being impressed by CGI is such a standard sensation that I have become immune to its charms.

The film as a whole tries to balance on a knife-edge between a slow philosophical sci-fi musing, and a faster-paced sci-fi horror. It desperately fails at this. Not because of any innate problem with this fusion - far from it, other films have managed this capably. Sunshine springs to mind. It fails because it has very little internal consistency, the characters are mostly blank nothings and the writing is shockingly poor given the pretensions at high concept and the proven talents of Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof.

Characters will be terrified and fleeing for their lives one moment, and the next giggling and trying to make friends with an alien snake creature. They will be having high-minded discussions of the creation of mankind, and segue awkwardly into a relationship argument. A technological MacGuffin is examined by Rapace's tabula rasa archaeologist lead - she is amazed to have seen one, since only 12 have ever been made. Shortly after this she operates it competently without any hesitation or need for training. These last two examples are also linked to another problem, one of long-range telegraphing that disrupts the flow for the viewer with astonishing clumsiness. The relationship argument is an obvious lead-in to a plot twist that is resolved utilising the MacGuffin, and then virtually thrown away without comment by any other character. The crew just revolve around each other without caring about life, death or any sense of planning through what is fundamentally the most important scientific mission in human history. You get the sense they're making it up as they go along, which in turn makes you feel Ridley Scott and the writers were doing the same thing.

If this were a pure schlock sci-fi horror, that wouldn't matter. It also wouldn't matter that the inevitable alien (though not Alien) nastyness that emerges doesn't seem to behave or operate under any sense of internal logic. Are they monsters? Do they turn people into monsters? Or into themselves, via any method that is contrived in order to put the cast into a hazardous situation? Oh, all of the above. Unfortunately, when you have pretensions of philosophising and more serious sci-fi these things jar harshly with your suspension of disbelief. Individually these are all nitpicking elements that nerds like me throw out with a snorting sneer, but unfortunately in the case of Prometheus they pile on top of each other until all you're left with is lots of almost-but-not-quite Alien trilogy referencing and a ship full of scientists and blue collar workers who all look like underwear models. There are quite a few extra frustrations I am leaving out of this review, for the sake of spoilerisation and the boredom you would feel from reading the offshoots from my mighty Organ Of Cynicism.

So, anything decent in the whole turgid junk pile? Well, as I said before it looks nice. The opening scene is superb, mysterious and beautifully shot - but that probably just contributes to the eventual disappointment of the rest of the film. Michael Fassbender is excellent as the morally dubious android David, pushing his performance head and shoulders out of the dross surrounding him to become the finest camp robot in cinema since C-3PO. But other than that, Prometheus badly fails to live up to its promise. Ridley Scott can direct much better than this. Damon Lindelof can write much better than this. Most of the cast can act much better than this.

And while I appreciate the notion of expanding an established universe into an odd sideways direction, the creative team have really shot themselves in the foot by linking themselves to superior cinematic efforts.

D-, guys. Must try harder.

Gig Review: Resistanz Festival 2012

Well, this review might go on a bit. Lots of it might not really be directly about the bands that played. It may, in fact, turn into a rant. I will try and keep myself focused, but I am also aware that my rants tend to make for quite entertaining reading.

Unless they're about you and your friends. Sorry about that.

It was my first time at Resistanz this year, and most of the reservations I had about a festival being pitched at Sheffield's Corporation venue were tipped over the side shortly after I arrived. There was plenty of room to maneuver, a seating area by the food and clothing stalls, relatively easy access to the numerous bars and more club-oriented rooms in which to lounge if the acts onstage weren't your cup of tea.

Set times were adhered to, the venue was well-staffed and the sound quality was mostly decent (with an emphasis on 'mostly' - we'll come back to that bit later). So all round, 'nuff respect to the Resistanz masterminds and crew. And really, that's mostly what you want from a festival unless you're a filthy teetotal musical bitch. Like me. So onwards to the bands, then.

Saturday kicked off at top speed with Memmaker, a hard dance collective who have made a mark on these pages before - surprising me with a driving performance at Infest 2010. And they delivered much the same at Resistanz, getting most of the early starters into the mood with some crunchy beats and high energy synthlines. It's not (strictly speaking) my thing, but there's no denying that they were a great warm-up act for what was to follow. So great, in fact, that I have to question their placing right down at the bottom of the bill. In all honesty, they were better than anyone else on the Saturday. Give these chaps higher festival slots, please.

Following this kickin' opening were Be My Enemy, a leaden slab of metal-tinged techno-industrial fronted by Cubanate alumnus Phil Barry. And frankly, Cubanate is a very appropriate touchstone. Going so far as to cover a couple of their tracks - including evergreen dancefloor mauler "Oxyacetylene" - they show a lot of promise but something feels like it isn't quite clicking yet. A new take on what they are following on from, perhaps. In addition to this, Barry's JS Clayden-esque sneering whine takes a bit of getting used to when one is used to Marc Heal's ursine roar over the top of this kind of material. None of this was helped by an extremely muddy, poor sound mix.

Next up was trippy-industrial power noise mentalist Jamie Blacker with his project E.S.A., and while his shows are always incendiary and overflowing with aggressive adrenal release I found something slightly lacking to this one. A relative paucity of material from career highlight 'The Sea & The Silence', maybe. Or perhaps now that the power noise scene has gotten a taste of live performance I have become used to howling men in wifebeater vests bashing electronic drums along to big acidic beats. Regardless, it was still a decent show and E.S.A. remain a solid live recommendation.

Soman get labelled with a lot of fraudulent genre titles, but realistically his stuff can be comfortable and simply slotted into the 'techno' bracket. Without a doubt the purest dance material of the weekend, his bubbling enthusiasm for playing live is something that could be seen to be holding the performance together. The music itself is neither stripped-back nor gnarly enough to push itself out from a crowd of similar artists who have been cannibalising each other since the early 1990s, but how much does that matter when one is faced with a grinning lunatic bouncing up and down on stage and generally channeling the cheery raving face of Tyres from Spaced? Well, to a dour old hack like me - it matters quite a lot. Not so much for the audience though, who are fairly happy to just zone out and move to the everpresent four-on-the-floor beat. Soman seems to be slowly morphing into the DJ Tiësto of the industrial scene. Make of that what you will.

A change of pace is heralded by Frozen Plasma taking the stage, wielding a fairly stale take on the old electropop formula championed by the likes of And One. If that's your thing, cool. You'd have lapped them up. Their only saving grace for me was Felix Marc's genuine attempt to be an engaging frontman. This, however, was let down by a mediocre vocal performance and some genuinely drab and dull music to jump around listlessly along to.

Nachtmahr. Oh, Nachtmahr. When will we ever get along? Not any time soon, if this performance is to be a herald of things to come. I will refer the reader once again to my Infest 2010 review, where I railed against the whole military fashion aesthetic and theme of the band like the bleeding-heart liberal bore I am. But what struck me about them this time round wasn't along those lines (apart from Thomas Rainer's haircut, which is getting more Hitler-like every year). It was just how sub-par they are musically. Electro-industrial, electro-industrial, doof doof doof eek eek eek. Waagh waagh waagh half-hearted shouty bit. Like most popular non-noise sub-genres in 'the scene' these days, it's taking a pattern laid down by Suicide Commando and proceeding to smooth out the rough edges, paint it a different shade of black then repeat ad nauseum. And hell, even Suicide Commando were a tad repetitive on the best of days. Throw in some borderline offensive Combichrist misanthropy/un-PC antagonism and we're good to go. I was struck especially by the tune "Mädchen In Uniform", which sounded like an early teenage garage band got ahold of a bunch of synthesisers and wrote a song for their school's battle of the bands.

And yet you schlubs fucking swallow it down and beg for more. I hate all of you.

Saturday was headlined by Grendel. I caught about two songs by them, enough to be rickrolled. Coreline did it better. He had a dance troupe, and the redoubtable Keef Baker dressed as a carrot. Strip the poorly judged Rick Astley cover out, and it's just more electro-industrial. Yeah ok, they're a bit better at it than most. They've been doing it longer. But still. It's a sub-genre revolving around an endless wannabe-cyberpunk scratchy vinyl loop and I'm far too bitter a human being (and lazy a reviewer) to sit through more of it than I have to.

So sorry, Grendel. Sorry, Grendel fans. You're all the very best people, I'm sure. But doof doof doof, eek eek eek. Snore.

Sunday arrived. I made an attempt to shed the horrible pitted husk of my usual self to enjoy Surgyn, and was mildly surprised to find I nearly made it there. Bringing together elements of futurepop, more traditional industrial and ~grits teeth~ electro-industrial to a fairly cohesive whole, what they lack in genre spot-welding talent they make up for with making the effort to put on a show and put across a persona. The overall effect is somewhat brought down by a slight shonkyness that pervades everything, and a potentially interesting insert of operatic vocals into the more typical vocal delivery is let down by a lack of, well, singing ability. But all these things are nothing a hefty lump of experience couldn't fix. Ones to watch.

And just in case I was under a feverish delusion that there would be a surfeit of innovation for the rest of the day, Detroit Diesel come along and pound out a harsh EBM set that seriously could have been any other act peddling similar wares. I suppose I should give thanks they weren't exactly electro-industrial, but it just made me feel I was watching a Decoded Feedback tribute act. Nothing especially wrong, but nothing especially right either. Next.

Oh no. Wait. Next was FGFC820, wasn't it? Christ. More harsh EBM, only now with a military aesthetic and lyrics. All my favourite things in one place. Stomping around the stage in a flak jacket to recycled/simplified old FLA burbles and synths does not make you an American Funker Vogt.  Bereft of charisma, nothing individual or remarkable whatsover. Like an overweight army reject dry-humping his replica M6 carbine along to the beat. While you bay and cheer and dance like the dogs you are.

That's unfair, actually. It implies they went down well. They didn't, really. Maybe you're not all that bad after all.

Thank the great old ones for W.A.S.T.E then, who blast through a tight set of genuinely varied industrial noise complete with full video backing (ranging from atrocities to '80s breakdancing) and occasionally break off from their rhythmic assault to come centre stage and bellow at the swollen crowd. This was the rarest of things, a noise set that felt like a proper gig and not a DJ. Melodic elements were discernable despite the brutal and unforgiving machine noise layers, and the songs featuring vocals really lifted material above and beyond their genre confines. At times veering excitingly close to a more unrelenting and violent old school industrial, W.A.S.T.E definitely got the crowd moving again.

Straftanz. Very popular. Undoubtedly a party act with a fairly mixed batch of sounds and songs, some of their stuff almost touched on electro (for any scene kids reading this, that's without the -industrial bit, and sounding really quite different). Like most party acts though, it wasn't my thing. There's a limit to how much I can jump up and down and go 'woo', and Straftanz hit it about 10 seconds into their set. Can't really condemn them though. Go see them and decide for yourself. What, you want quality AND dedication in your reviews? Go to someone who gets paid for it.

Then Ultraviolence came on stage, and the average age of the audience members went up by 20 years. Managing to be both faintly embarassing and really quite enjoyable, Johnny Violent seemed moderately shocked to be onstage playing to a number of people who still knew his songs. It was a fair tour of his older 1,000,000bpm gabber material alongside at least one newer track that came overlaid with a glittering sheen and was, somewhat shockingly, really very good. That's not to say I don't enjoy Ultraviolence on record or live, but to be handing out genuinely decent dancefloor tunes at this stage in his career wasn't what I had expected. Perhaps a new album, Mr Violent? If it maintains consistency it would be a worthy purchase. Backing the shouting/big beat chicanery was some angle grinding and such, which did wonders to pad out the inherently pared-down sound. Closing with an inevitable "Hardcore Motherfucker", it was a set that most likely satisfied old fans and maybe even piqued the interest of a few vacant cyberkiddies.

A total change was then on the cards with mind.in.a.box taking to the stage and running through their synthpop material transformed for a traditional live rock band setup. As an exercise for an electronic act, it's fascinating. As something for a near-headliner to do in front of a festival crowd used to their recorded material and with heads full of grinding beats, it's incredibly bold. And it worked too, though the sound once more collapsed under the weight of all those filthy analog instruments. Since the only other band to really suffer from bad sound over the weekend was Be My Enemy, I am forced to conclude that whoever was conducting the engineering for the weekend wasn't used to bands who have non-electronic elements. It beggars belief that any sound engineers fit into that category. Maybe it was just bad luck/equipment. If not (and if the entire weekend was conducted by a single group of guys), then someone needs a thorough whipping for pretending to be competent enough to mix a festival.

And while we're at it, back onto a common cause of complaint for me. Venues, get some decent lighting people in. Because what The Corporation have right now, as many of you do, is not a lighting expert. They're a fucking epilepsy technician. Strobes - 5 second maximum. Once. In one song. Per set. Some bands don't need them at all. Light shows need subtlety, not everything turned up to 11. You're there to augment the performance, not hammer on your buttons like an overexcited primate.

Where were we? Oh yeah, mind.in.a box - innovative, well-executed proggy synthpop guitar thing. Different, engaging and emotive. The tracks I did recognise I definitely prefer in their original format, but I am willing to drop my mask of vile cynicism for a band as genuinely heartfelt as this. Full marks for effort and execution, and a welcome breath of fresh air.

The Sunday - and festival - headliners were Icon Of Coil, and it took less than half a song for anyone with any semblance of brain activity to realise why. Rolling onto the stage like conquering heroes, it was a set that drove home just how little there needs to be seperating the energy of an electronic band from a rock/metal band in a live setting if people know what they are doing. It also clearly hammered in place just how superior IOC were to the current output of follow-up acts like Combichrist. Bringing out half of their debut album 'Serenity Is The Devil' and augmented by choice picks off their other releases, I felt for the first time that my body was moving in some kind of rhythmic pattern. After several minutes, I slowly came to the realisation that I was dancing. I am apparently not quite as leached of passion and youth as the rest of this review might have you believe.

Crucially, Icon's performance helped highlight the weaknesses of a good deal of the other acts that weekend. Charisma? Check. Distinctive sound? Check. A raft of quality material? Check. All things provided by experience and a lack of willingness to simply go through the motions. I'll leave off from completing this rant because I feel an article coming on, but to put it simply - they were awesome. Glittering futurepop anthems like "Dead Enough For Life" were mixed with the likes of the darkly throbbing "Floorkiller", and an encore emerged in the form of their excellent cover of Front 242's "Headhunter". This hopefully won't be the last we see of Icon Of Coil.

There were undoubtedly decent acts scattered through the weekend, and I can't fault the setup of the festival itself. But the message I was left with? The cyber-whatever scene is in desperate need of an adrenalising injection containing equal parts innovation, talent and serotonin.