Rehabilitation by THE SIN:DECAY may be around for quite some time but I stumbled upon this CD just a short time ago. Knowing that THE SIN:DECAY contains members by …and Oceans who made heavy use of electronics on their later albums I have a vague idea what I might be about to hear. And I’m not that wrong. It’s definitely electronic what’s coming out of the speakers. Rehabilitation is really dominated by synthesizers. Some might even say it is totally pasted with it. If you like your synths more as an addition or in the background you should stay away from this. But to me this thick synthie sound is just fine.
And the nearly sticky-sweet synths with a great eighties influence really do know how to please when heard for the first time. The other instruments consisting of rather simple industrial metal guitars and straight drums are acceptable, too and well produced. The vocals then mark the first weakness of Rehabilitation. These are sounding some kind of wanna-be grim and dark and just come out so monotonous that it’s merely fatiguing.
Unfortunately this will not maintain the only weakness of the album. Even already by the second time listening to Rehabilitation it’s clearly audible that the whole thing was not well thought over. The song structures are too simple and the mentioned vocals start to annoy more and more with each new turn. Ok, songs like We Are All Slaves and Give It Away will surely find some friends on the next gothic disco’s dancefloor but will be forgotten after a relatively short time.
In general one gets to know how THE SIN:DECAY would like to sound. But on Rehabilitation they just don’t manage to do so. The great Canadian The Birthday Massacre who are obviously a major inspiration show a lot better how eighties influenced synth drenched, poppy gothic rock can be played. And the harder, more industrial part is much better presented by bands like Pain, The Kovenant or Deathstars. The combination of these styles clearly was the goal but variation of ideas and an own approach just stayed behind.
No, it’s not really bad, especially the synth parts know how to please even if they are not bursting with ideas or variation. But the thing is - you can get all this much better than on Rehabilitation and the vocals just put the few good parts very much aside. But I will keep an eye on THE SIN:DECAY and I hope on a possible follow up album they can get rid of the mentioned weaker parts and come up with something more hitting. We’ll see…