Mexico’s Helder Camberos counts already to the veterans out of his country and presents now his second full-length album signed to the Italian EK Product label. After the well recognized last album ‘Destroyer’ and the short-time episode signed to Germany’s Electro Arc label, this all new album can count on a lot of similarities compared to the predecessors. It’s not only EBM presented on this with 18 tracks opulent offered silver-circle, Red Industrie intermixes with genre-bending styles like Futurepop, Electro-Clash, and/or Powernoise to hunt for attention of the international audience. Helder is also world-wide known for his talent to cooperate with international renowned artists for their influence on his compositions. This kind of work could be already noticed under his more Synth-/Electropop-oriented project Isis Signum (check for reviews here on our site’¦) in mutual compositions, remix contributions, or guest vocal appearances. So you can be assured to get a varied Electronica album from Helder with mostly danceable tunes while you should keep in mind that not all of his compositions end in a satisfying result.
First of all the foundation is based on minimal EBM / Electropop structures on nearly every track. Guitars provided in a pathetic Rock-Music manner are seemingly an allowed music-instrument to use (‘(D)ark Angel’, ‘Still Breathing’), but this element is seemingly a matter of taste. It also needs to be said that there are out there more talented vocalists and lyricists than Helder is actually capable to deliver. His ‘messages’ out of his lyrically content dealing with fetishes, control, censorship and rebellion are mostly slogan-likes shouts with a plain meaning.
There can be at times extracted the tacky suspicion, that this album ‘lives’ from the guest appearances and their talents, because the best and most satisfying results belong to the collaborative tracks like the nice pads / bass-line sequences of ‘Kathy’s Song (Apoptygma Berzerk cover)’, or the noise patterns of ‘Fetiche Futuro (feat. H.I.V.+)’. As far as remixes go, the worlds’ most hired remixer alive, Mr. Peter Rainman (People Theatre)’ adds a post-modern outfit and adds his voice for a few parts on the already mentioned cover ‘Kathy’s Song’, while Dark Control Operation know perfectly how to program a badass bass-line on ‘Fetiche Futuro’. Also the further remixes of Tourdeforce, LA-X, Tecnoman SF, Neikka RPM, and Matsfer provide satisfaction and compensate for the almost average own compositions.
‘Censored’ as a whole album is a two-sided sword and it needs an open mind to accept the complete content. In the first instance it looks a bit like overkill to provide 18 tracks, but since this album touches a lot of diverse styles and offers a lot of Helder’s talent to collaborate with musicians out of very different countries, it finally makes sense. If it comes to rate Helder’s very own compositions it needs to be said that they aren’t cooked with the freshest water available. There’s a lot of space for development.