��Little known outside of their home country despite having been around since 1992, Different State originally started out as more of a heavy, somewhat metallic outfit, their earliest material centering around a kind of twisted Godfleshian industro-metal dirge. Later on, the band would begin to evolve into a strange fusion of post-industrial influences, gothic creep-jazz and sinister illbient / dub excursions, which could at times lead their music into something that resembled a strange, Eastern European cabaret version of Scorn. The occult influenced post-industrial music of Coil would appear to be another major influence on the often perplexing and unconventional directions that the band's later material would go in, and the past two decades have seen them combine their experimental tendencies with an array of cold industrial soundscapes and ritualistic atmospheres. On the band's latest album The Frigid Condition, the long running group offers more of that surreal ambience with this collection of eerie, abstract soundscapes.

�� On this new material, Different State continue to strike a balance between the dark, occult-tinged delirium of classic Coil and the dystopian dub of Scorn; now basically stripped down to the solo project of founding member Marek Marchoff (joined by the dramatic vocals of Vera Beren), the band unfolds their music into a series of surreal soundscape of swirling atmospheric loops and demented, damaged blues, weaving in fragments of early 20th century Polish folk music and dark whirling drones around the sound of his wrecked strum n' twang, the guitar strings bent into a kind of abused Delta blues, these sounds winding around the slow ritualistic pounding of drums in the deep. Indian classical influences also seep into the mix, as with the droning, raga-like buzz of "Consciousness" (which features additional guitar sounds from Jon Diaz from Robert Fripp's League Of Crafty Guitarists); other tracks blend together clanking metallic percussion, trippy psychedelic guitar work, and deep resonant drones with wailing, dramatic female vocals that are somewhat reminiscent of Jarboe's soulful howl. Elsewhere, the album descends into eerie dystopian electronica and luminous midnight drones, swells of sinister EVP-like sound and bleary trumpets drenched in delay, stretches of jazzy bass slithering beneath the band's looping, mesmeric nocturnal ambience and deep rumbling amplifier drones. It's a strange sort of industrial-tinged, vaguely gothic psychedelia that Marchoff creates here, more than once reminding me of some of the later Swans material. Some of the industrial dub darkness of previous Different State albums surfaces as well on tracks like "Love", "Intuition" and "Conspiracy In The Mirror", the latter joined by Vera Beren's processed spoken word vocals, distant screams, and ghostly darkjazz saxophones that writhe around the echoing metallic rhythms, deep squelchy electronics, and blasts of warped boom-bap.

��Another excellent album of unusual, psychedelic post-industrial darkness from this oft-overlooked outfit, nicely packaged in a six panel digipack.