The Summary Judgment Reviews:

	Title: Rebirth Artist: Pain Label: Renegade Records Release Date: 8/14/01 Rating: 2 Skulls
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Reviewed by Redwolff (10/31/01):
Pain is a pretty new band headed by Peter Tatgren, who released a number of records with Hypocrisy and produces a ton of stuff at his Abyss Studios. But in becoming an electronica composer, he may have discovered his only weakness. I am a huge fan of electronica, techno and the like, including artists like Rob Zombie and KMFDM, and I find this album to be extremely remiscent of both.
The album was originally released in 1999, but just released here in the States in August of this year. I might say that this delay explains the dated quality of the music, but the album's staleness isn't the only problem here. Rebirth is a collection of repetitive, simplistic songs without the usual layers expected in electronic music. Basically, it sounds like a guy singing along to a drum machine with some gothy additional vocals thrown in on the chorus parts. The first two songs did grab me (and not for all good reasons, but I'll get to that in a minute) but then I noticed, as I went along, that every song on the rest of the album pretty much sound like variations of the first two songs... alternated over and over.
The first song, "Supersonic Bitch" did grab my attention. It has a driving beat, and from listening to a little bit of it, it seemed like a good idea to take it with me to the gym. Once I had it on headphones, I couldn't help but listen to the lyrics more carefully, and found most of them to be borderline misogynistic-- not to mention it uses "bitch" to rhyme with "bitch" in the chorus, and I really have a pet peeve about using a word to rhyme with itself. The second song, which is the other half of the album-wide formula, has even more repugnant lyrics, such as "I think I'm coming, get ready to receive/ I'll spray you full with my killer disease." Ewwww... Who is this song trying to appeal to? 14-year-old boys with medical fetishes?
The bottom line is, the album sounds unsophisticated. I've heard this genre done before, and done better, by other bands. To people who only listen to metal, this may seem like a new sound, but trust me, it isn't. I respect Mr. Tatgren for his desire to be creative and express his muse in different ways, but I think he should drop this side project before it embarrasses him.

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