Dystopian cyberpunk! Welcome to the future!

Well, in terms of concept, industrial duo Avgmnt would certainly appear to be looking into the (probably not too distant, the way things are going) future, with a storyline outlining what awaits us all if we don’t pull our collective fingers out. However, to ram these ideas home, they opt for a comfortingly familiar sonic feel; Opening scene-builder Horizon Seqvence fuses a synth background strangely reminiscent of Jean-Michel Jarre with a vocal probably best described as ‘Kornesque’, whilst the brooding Copy <Waste> brings A bit of Reznor to the table with, inevitably, Gary Numan.

If I sound a bit carpy, I don’t mean to, because the whole thing is hugely enjoyable; Vocalist ΩZ has a great voice – on third track Hvman Skin he pitches himself somewhere between Michael Hutchence and Dave Gahan with pleasing results – and alongside musical partner αn he’s come up with a generally easy-on-the-ear set of alt.rock bangers.

In fact the earworm nature of much of the material here may ironically undermine the story the pair are trying to sell; Only the ohGresque Somatose, with it’s scratchy percussion and drug comedown vocals really comes close to menacing the listener in the way you get the sense the album’s perpetrators would really like to achieve throughout, but that’s a minor setback in the great scheme of things.

Nvll finds the album at it’s heaviest, in contrast to following track and exercise in stadium rap-rock Slvmtropolis, which incorporates female vocals to break up the testosterone a little and add a nice, if brief, counterpoint to everything else that’s going on.

Monsieur Jarre returns for the short segue Bvrial (which is absolutely gorgeous, by the way, and should have gone on a bit longer in this reviewer’s opinion) before closing track Pvre Black brings the curtain down with another dip back into eighties new wave interwoven with chunky, downtuned guitars.

Eminently listenable, varied and well executed if not quite following through on the promise of the album’s concept fully, Avgmnt have made an album well worthy of your attention with Seqvences. Give it a whirl.

Seqvences releases on April 21st.