Dark Control Operation (DCO) is a side-project of Dolls Of Pain. Dolls Of Pain gained some recognition as dark-electro act having released different albums on labels like Urgence Disk Records and Advoxya Records. The debut album of DCO moves into retro EBM fields and sounds like a good surprise.
The songs are into the purest and most traditional EBM vein. The songs have been accomplished with solid and carrying leads, which for sure are one of the main strengths of the duo WMS_73 – VDB_42. We now and then can notice a strong and efficient epic influences, which has been even joined by a martial-minded rhythmic (cf. “Anachronism”). The main EBM style reminds me of the early 90s. There’s a kind of Evils Toy shadow hanging over “2,4,5-T” which still is one of the most noticeable songs of the CD. A few other songs are a bit cliché-like (referring to the typical sirens announcing aircraft raids), but it doesn’t really affect the album as it’s a well-crafted and powerful production. Dark Control Operation is not exactly what we might call an innovative band, but the kind of project, which is totally devoted to good-old EBM. The vocals are quite typical as well, but here again I’ll not complain as this band perfectly knows how to compose cool EBM.
The last part of the album features 5 remixes by interesting names like “K-Bereit, Vomito Negro, Bak XIII, GrandChaos and Combat Voice. Most of the remixes are quite interesting, but I’ll mention the K-Bereit remix of “Backlash” as the best one.
Conclusion: Dark Control Operation totally fits to the EBM taste of EK Product and brings us a quite achieved debut release.