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Customer Reviews of Empires

A classic of the gerne.
This is a standout work in the electronic/industrial scene. VNV Nation's music has really matured from earlier work, even Praise the Fallen. This CD is a great continuation of where PTF left off. Bands like VNV and APB are really injecting new life into the industrial scene and its about time! Empires is an imaginative forray into mankinds pointless efforts to realize a utopian ideal on Earth. I love the orchestral aspect of this CD. Its like classic music played against a hardcore aggro backbeat. Ronan's vocal style is perfectly suited for the seriousness of the music and lyrical subject matter. Outsiders may judge it to be a bit heady. Sure it is! That's why we love it! Are you going to tell me that something like Empires warrants less artistic merit than the latest marketing gimmick schlock crap from Nsync? This is serious music for the brooding intellgentsia. It is a beautiful work. One of the best conceptual industrial music CD's I've heard. I look forward to more work from VNV Nation. Saviour is awesome. Distant (Rubicon II) is a great synth/vocal combo that is so lyrically heavy it makes you depressed, or estatic. Standing is another great track which features some great keyboard acrobatics. They're all really good tracks. Not a bad one on the entire disc. This is a must have for your collection.

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if only all music were like this...
Topping their previous album Praise The Fallen, would normally be quite the task. There was very little room for improvement. I know that a lot of people were worried that Empires would just be a rehash of PTF. I'm happy to say that Empires more than lives up to the task, even surpasing their previous albums in emotion and skill.

All the classic VNV elements are here: harsh electronic beats, sweeping synths and strings, and Ronan's unique vocals. The songs are in the same vein as PTF, about the beauty and darkness of strife and struggle. The first and last tracks, "firstlight" and "arclight" blend together seemlessly (being nearly the same song), creating a cycle of sound and structure unifying the work. It's art. "Darkangel" and "Standing" have already become singles in Europe and are both excellent tracks, VNV's best to date, but other appealing songs include "rubicon" and "distant(rubicon II)." Distant has a slow, drifting sound, free of the assembly-line industrial backbeat so common to VNV. A welcome change of pace.

The duo of Empires and Praise The Fallen will become classics in the EBM world, if they haven't already. stop reading and listen to them already!

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Dark, Beautiful, Harsh, Melodic, Euphoric
This CD is quite simply VNV Nation's masterpiece. A brooding, agressive CD filled with anger, angst, hatred and death.

Empires is a concept album, based upon the axiom that all empires end in the same way as they begin: The ashes of destruction and the fires of war. As the CD makes its way through the explosive idealism of Kingdom, the ecstatic machinations of Saviour, the solemn tension of Standing and Legion, and eventually the horrific destruction of Darkangel, the reader is subjected to emotional assaults such as feelings of power, helplessness, horror, triumph and anguish.

These emotional assaults are due to two factors, these being the music, and the lyrics. The lyrics are dark, highly intelligent, poetic, and genuinely deep, with a feeling of a blend between Hitler speeches and Joy Division.

However, it is the outstanding music that has to be given credit for the majority of the CD. VNV Nation sound like a mixture between Industrial, Synthpop and Classical music and, for some reason, go well with all three kinds. The Industrial element is the percussion and basslines, which are (for EBM) harsh, arpeggiated, distorted and raw. Such a savagery requires a heavy element of melody to balance it, and this is done perfectly with the Synthpop and Classical elements. This is very similar to Wolfsheim, Iris and the less minimalist synth groups, with a very thick sound, heavily exploiting its artificiality. However, with the mechanical sounds are a large amount of Strings and orchestral instruments, giving a usually mechanical style of music a very human and organic feel. Furthermore, the structure of the music is very Orchestral, bestowing upon it the epic nature that makes this CD so unutterably breathtaking.

Empires sounds like the Berlin Symphony Orchestra at a Bauhaus Concert being massacred by chainsaw-wielding Nazis. This is a compliment of the highest order.

Whatever deficiencies that Praise The Fallen had are completely remedied here. The percussion is far less basic on this album, and many more songs manage to sound balanced, as opposed to overly synthy or overly industrial.

I cannot express my adoration for this album enough. This album is the perfect example of modern EBM. Less minimalist than the original style, and far more complex. This is the Front By Front of the new millenium.