ShockOne - Lazerbeam (feat. Metrik & Kyza)

Throwing in my 2 cents on some new D&B

Being honest here, I'm still quite a recent convert to drum and bass (and by extension, to the probable chagrin of some fanboys, dubstep) having only heard my first full-on D&B track somewhere around the end of 2005/start of 2006, and then only really diving into the music about two or three years ago. So yeah, cards on the table, noob points established.
But one of the artists who really helped kickstart my love for drum and bass is the now London-based Aussie expat Karl Thomas a.k.a. ShockOne.

A member of the biggest and (arguably) best of the Australian D&B scenes, ShockOne had his musical origins playing drums in a Perth metal band with Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen of Knife Party fame, but who had previously gained more notoriety as founding members of drum and bass superstars Pendulum.

Having been so musically intertwined with the Pendulum lads, it really is quite hard to not hear the similarities between the sounds of ShockOne and his former band members, as both follow pretty much the same formula in creating driving, metal-tinged D&B; chock-full of mid-range, angular synth riffs (in Pendulum's case, also full of actual metal guitar riffs, check their collaboration with Swedish melodic death metal titans In Flames on "Self Vs Self" off of their final album Immersion), groovy 90's thrash slam-pit breakdows and modern vocal vocoder box production trickeries, whilst still having throwbacks to oldskool jungle 

This leads us neatly into the subject of today's review: 

ShockOne (finally) is dropping his first full length album in a couple of weeks, and "Lazerbeam" fronts up as the 4th single (the first single "Crucify Me" being released way back in mid 2011).
Billed as a collaboration with Metrik and featuring vocals from Kyza, "Lazerbeam" is a perfect example of where modern D&B is at in 2013, and quite frankly, is fucking massive.

ShockOne's more electronic-oriented Perth-style D&B sound is all over this track (frankly I can't really hear much of Metrik more heavy/ethereal stuff here); the swaggering halftime intro with Kyza effortlessly switching from a modern D&B/dubstep-styled grimey hip-hop flow to oldskool jungle rudeboy toasting and vocals that bring to mind Benji Webbe from Skindred (and an-80's hip-hop throwback descending 808 kick line in the background), the dancefloor destroying build-up and subsequent drop, the massive mid-range "rhythm guitar" backing genre-typical bleepy leads and the ubiquitous (but actually pretty gnarly, at least in this case) "half-time-drumstep-moshpit" breakdown at around 2:30, and to be honest there really isn't much more I can say about this absolutely monstrous piece of music except for you all (again, assuming people actually read this) to listen to it, and listen to it now. Big speakers with big bass will do the trick.

Massive!

"Lazerbeam" is out April 14th on Viper Recordings with remixes from Au5 and Skism, with the LP Universus dropping in Australia & New Zealand April 26th, with a global release April 29th.