If life, as the poet Keats claimed, can indeed be likened to "a large mansion of many apartments", which part of it resides in Apartment 26? Would it perchance be youth, angst-ridden and angry; draped in black and tattooed, scarred with the wounds of hate and self-loathing? Apartment 26 is not a place for quiet reflection - here five British blokes, led by singer Biff -son of Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler-, prefer to spew, stamp, and otherwise try to obliterate their rage in a metal, electro-punk catharsis.
Shame that, in their eagerness, they forgot to keep an eye on the quality control meter. Opener 'Backwards' is the perfect Metallica-style doomlord anthem - grandiose yet undeniably hook-laden, with lyrics of enough darkness and grav(e)ity for the goths to put on their gravestones and for everyone else to laugh at "Everything's gone backwards/Nothing's what it seems/I awake from my nightmares/Smash the mirror/Smash the dreams"- which rather amusingly sounds like 'tree'). But while second track 'Doing It Anyway', does the riffs-dragged-up-from-hell bit superbly,the fact it's a third-rate copy of a third-rate Nine Inch Nails will probably have you singing along loudly to the lyrics "what's the point in doing it anyway?"
From there, things continue to slither further down the spiral, as Apartment 26 lose all interest in trying to sound anything other than a watered-down version of every other band in the genre. Apartment 26? Maybe Room 101 would be a better idea.
