51 minutes, 59 seconds

C-Tec
Cut

Jean-Luc De Meyer is blessed with one of the more distinctive voices in the industrial genre. You know him, of course, from Front 242, but he's also lent his pipes to Cobalt 60, Bigod 20, Birmingham 6, 32Crash, and a few other bands, some of whom don't even use numbers in their name, such as C-Tec. C-Tec actually began life as the Cyber-Tec Project, which scored a minor club hit with the propulsive "Let Your Body Die" back in 1995.

This album, C-Tec's second and, to date, last release, came out in 2000, and it has its moments. The chief reason to listen to it, though, is De Meyer. He's one of the rare examples of an "industrial" vocalist who benefits from less distortion added to his voice. (Assemblage 23's Tom Shear is another example.) He manages to be expressive without being "soulful," which to me always ends up sounding fake when coming from a white singer. (See VNV Nation's Ronan Harris.)

And De Meyer is a skilled lyricist. You could argue that a lot of Front 242's lyrics were reduced to ironic sloganeering, and you'd be right, but they never sounded cynical. And that's largely thanks to De Meyer's transfixing delivery. He made even the most banal lines sound urgent and fraught with hidden meaning.

Hard to believe the other members of Front 242 sent him packing for a brief period around the release of 06:21:03:11 Up Evil and 05:22:09:12 Off. He was the best part of the band.

Also today:

51:58 Non-Aggression Pact, Gesticulate
51:58 Thymikon, Nipsis
51:57 Data-Bank-A, The Death Burlesque
51:57 Dead Can Dance, Spiritchaser
51:57 Speaking Silence, The Twilight World
51:56 Corvus Corax, Inter Deum et Diabolum Semper Musica Est
51:56 Vox, Diadema
51:55 Mellonta Tauta, Sun Fell