English dubstep duo Nero has been working within the genre since 2008, originally producing house and drum and bass before. Dubstep, as many of you probably are aware, has become very prevalent amongst crowds of people who strive to look for the new sound. Welcome Reality takes the idea of the genre, the idea of what it is to be involved in dubstep and sets the bar, which is impressive considering this is the first outing from the duo.
Look, every genre of music has a high water mark. In every style of music, people crowd around, verify and stamp their cred on on worthy records. Those fans will have an album that will retroactively be viewed as the forefront of what a specific genre had to offer. I can't see into the future (I'd be much more wealthy and successful if I could), but Welcome Reality really stands out as something writers and bloggers will look at when doing a post mortem on dubstep as the best representation of the genre.
The album comes to the forefront with the usuals you expect in dubstep. It has heavy bass, a metallic, almost speaker-filling beat pulsing along. A song like "My Eyes" comes off as a hybrid of 1980s electronic pop music done by people living in 2011. A song like "Me and You" sounds like the duo put mid '90s brit-pop in a blender with their own sound. The track "Reaching Out" samples the Hall and Oates (?!) song "Out of Touch" and actually makes it work within the music, with the chorus jumping in and out of swerved beats and sounds. A high point on the album is the song "Crush on You." Starting off with high pitched 1980s pop--so 1980s that you fight the desire to buy a gigantic cell phone--the song then deconstructs itself completely with electronic buzzes and tricks. It's as if the song is fighting against itself and eventually will swallow itself.
In my prep for reviewing this album I figure I've listened to enough dubstep to get the idea of what it is and what the eventual ceiling could be. Welcome Reality is the new high water mark of the genre; it is the album that every other DJ will have to listen to and figure out where to go from that. A type of music, that, to outsiders can easily be written off as boring techno sounding music is transformed into an actual piece of art after listening. The two best tracks are "Promises," with a soaring chorus that lifts the listener into another sonic realm and "Doomsday," which is menacing and super-villian-esque and probably the best offering as a single. To not mince words further, the album is very very good; good enough to convince people who don't listen to this music to buy, good enough to hear when you're out and say "who is THIS?" and absolutely good enough for someone who likes the music to need a copy of this.
Track List
1. 2808
2. Doomsday
3. My Eyes
4. Guilt
5. Fugue State
6. Me and You
7. Innocence
8. In the Ways
9. Scorpions
10. Crush on You
11. Must Be the Feeling
12. Reaching Out
13. Promises
14. Departure
