The Sweetest Condition – We Defy Oblivion

'The Sweetest Condition' on the path of Industrial Pop

While the pre­curs­or 'Edge Of The World' was more driv­en of Synth Pop and Darkwave sounds, 'We Defy Oblivion' comes with a much more rough­er and heav­ier sound now. There is a heavy use of elec­tric gui­tars on all songs, and it sounds that 'The Sweetest Condition' have define their music new. They simply call it 'Industrial Pop'. I only can agree that this genre descrip­tion fits at best.

The severe side of a sweet condition

The first sounds of the open­er 'Deconstructing' has a typ­ic­al EBM sequen­cer loop, the beat how­ever sounds a bit more ana­log to it. This com­bin­a­tion make it already sound interesst­ing. Within the chor­us you get sur­prised by the heavy sound­ing elec­tro gui­tars. An awe­some opener!

The second and third songs line up per­fectly after the great open­ing. But the fourth track 'Knock Us Down' has a much faster beat and hav­ing the poten­tial to become a club clas­sic. Even when this song is lyr­ic­ally a polit­ic­al inspired one, it's abso­lutely dance­able. Free accord­ing to the German slo­gan: "Tanzt kaputt, was euch kaputt macht!".

Achtung! This record includes German lyrics

Speaking of German! On the album there is the song 'Nein Nein Nein'. Overall this is a gor­geous track. Of course this track also comes with an elec­tric gui­tar, but sounds over­all a bit more elec­tric then the rest of the album. Two things come into my mind as I heard this song. First, if the German band 'Rammstein' would have a female sing­er, I can ima­gine that it would sound sim­il­ar to this track. Furthermore I was sur­prised how accur­ate Leslie Benson pro­noun­cing the German chor­us: "Ich will mehr, aber du sagst nein!". Congrats!

Brevity is the soul of wit

I'm in love with this catchy and romantic song 'Depths Of Hell'. Even it's not polit­ic­al motiv­ated, it integ­rates lyr­ic­ally beau­ti­ful in the concept of the album.

'Burn The City' is tech­nic­ally a great song for radio broad­cast­ing. I guess this one has the biggest 'Electrorock' factor. Sonically it's a bit more smooth­er and softer.

What do I fear at most? Except that love is not enough, I fear at most that the last track of a record is an unmo­tiv­ated piano bal­lad. In this case I'm happy to get dis­ap­poin­ted. 'Unforgiven' is a mag­ni­fi­cent song that could be placed near to the pole pos­i­tion of the record.

Final thoughts

'The Sweetest Condition' have man­aged to keep the high song qual­ity up to the end of the album. I have to give in, that I didn't found a high­light on this record, but I'm really sat­is­fied of the con­sist­ant qual­ity of almost all song. Almost? Well, I have rated the song 'Keep Turning Me On' with only 3 stars. The song isn't bad at all, it's just that this track sounds a bit too gen­er­ic to me.

If you are visu­ally influ­enced by the cov­er art­work, and expect an album that sounds like 'Nine Inch Nails' then your music­ally search will be fruit­less. It's def­in­itely more melod­ic, because it's Industrial with a pinch of Pop and a touch of Rock. If you accept this genre mix chal­lenge, we strongly recom­mend you 'We defy Oblivion'.

By the way, this album also made it into our art­icle ‘The best Synth Pop and genre-related albums 2016‘. Read now.

Track By Track Rating

The Sweetest Condition – We Defy Oblivion

Deconstructing

Faithless

Don't Cross Me

Knock Us Down

Keep Turning Me On

Vices

Depths Of Hell

Burn This City

Nein Nein Nein

Unforgiven

Recommend

Deconstructing

Knock Us Down

Weak

(Nothing to report here)

3.9

Groundbreaking

Watch the official album teaser now