This album is going to surprise anyone expecting a new platter of extreme doom metal from the UK label Aesthetic Death. Not that it would be unfair of you to do...Aesthetic Death has turned out an amazingly heavy bundle of albums, including two cult double-disc sets from the lysergic UK deathdoom entity Esoteric, and albums of pure molten sludge from Wreck Of The Hesperus, Stumm, and Wiljen Wij. Based on that track record and AD boss Stu's reliable nose for uncompromising underground heaviness, I've always taken in his new releases no-questions-asked. But this new disc from the label is certainly a shock...an album of lush, orchestral electronica in the vein of In The Nursery? That's what it appeared to be at first, and the first track "Last Faith" is certainly a moody bit of goth-tinged neo-classical/electronica. Further listening reveals more than just a heavy In The Nursery influence, though...since Dead Beat Project is actually an alter ego of Olivier Goyet, who plays keyboards with the aforementioned doomsters Esoteric, I was anticipating some of the abject sadness that permeates Esoteric's music, and I got it. There's a deep melancholy that courses through the nine tracks on Breaking The Shell, an introspective gloominess that Goyet paints with an array of spacey, prog-rock synthesizers, old-school electronica and trip-hop beats, and other nods to mostly older electronic music. Being a big fan of 80's/early 90's soundtrack music and electro-pop sounds, I really enjoyed this album - tracks like "Split In The Shell (Haunting Fluid)" and "The Reason Of My Soul" combine washes of vintage synthesizers with somewhat more contemporary breakbeats. But then "Alive And Living" appears, and suddenly Goyet moves into a kind of black-industrial doom, filled with menace and plodding dub-style drum hits, which actually sounds alot like an Esoteric song stripped of all guitars and bass and overlaid with symphonic synths. The last track "Moon Eclipse" has a similiar sort of super-slow doom feel, again sounding like a funereal doom song that has been turned into an orchestral trip hop jam. He certainly keeps things interesting on this constantly evolving album, blending together elements of Skinny Puppy style industrial dance music, dark ambient, tribal music, 80's electro, and those (very) subtle shades of Esoteric's crushing doom.