Wednesday, August 1, 2018

N-616 - "[ex​-​Planet Earth]" [2005]

Artist: N-616
Title: [ex​-​Planet Earth]
Genre: EBM, Dark Electro
Country: Russia
Release date: 2005

Track List:
  1. Bunker#616
  2. Production
  3. Monsters
  4. Front Line
  5. Consumption
  6. Last Conflict
  7. Civilization Of The Dawn
  8. Koniec
N-616 were formed in 2000 in Stavropol (according to other sources - in St.Petersburg) initially as a dark ambient / classical industrial project. After releasing their first demo "Snow", they incorporated more darkwave & EBM elements into their music on their second demo "Cold". Later on, these demos were released as a full-length album "Cold & Snow", which was released on Folvork Prods., a label that many readers of my blog probably are already familiar with. They continued going to the electro-industrial direction on their subsequent releases, "Electro Paradigm of Futurism", "Futurepolis", and this one, which came out in 2004 along with the EP "Winter World III". After that, the project went on a hiatus for more than a decade, but now they're active again, although they're better known for their other project called Eonic (new age / ambient).

While "[ex​-​Planet Earth]" might be not very interesting from the viewpoint of today's listener, and there's nothing particularly original or innovative, it was a groundbreaking release on the Russian industrial scene of the 2000s, where very few bands were played in this style before (the "boom" of harsh EBM / dark electro happened a couple years later). It also features design by D.I.Abigor (I used to read the blog of this guy several years ago), who's also responsible for the design of "Dolmen Factory" by Bad Sector and several albums by Velehentor.