"I've been a fan of German football ever since Karl Heinz Rummenigge scored this amazing goal from a corner kick in Mexico '86. Famous last words before you start getting every German dark-wave release in the promo pile. Good thing I didn't mention Lothar Matthaus or they would ask me to wear makeup while listening to the CDs.
So, you can guess how this promo ended up to me. Still scarred by my previous listening session of the latest Das Ich release, I took a deep breath and stepped forward to bravely face the cheesy electro-keyboard barrage I was about to receive.
The visual representation of the first minutes of listening to this album is like this; an 18-wheeler is racing towards you, you close your eyes waiting for your death. A few seconds later you decide to open one of your eyes and a car with an old lady drives by you at the blistering speed of 20km/h.
In other words, just a boring thing you'll soon forget instead of an Armageddon coming straight at you. Illuminate are veterans of the genre; 9 albums and 11 years of history composes a good background for any band. Unless the US National Security Agency notices the 9/11 combination and starts asking you questions. Uhum, back to the review.
This is not as bad an experience as Das Ich was, but it still is something that can't be saved with its good elements. Sure, there are guitars, not as much keyboards as I expected (in fact, minimal), nice piano and female vocalist performance. Still, the songs sound flat and uninteresting. At least the parts I listened to, since most tracks in the promo CD are snipped, but I highly doubt that something interesting happened in the missing parts.
It's classic German dark-wave that has nothing new to offer. Fans of this kind of music might find something to talk about in this album. I didn't.