The Fair Sex – The Dark Ages
Label: Van Richter Records
Style: Electronica, Industrial, Synth Rock
Released: 2005
My Grade: 2 stars
AMG: n/a
Sounds like: KMFDM, Testify, Skinny Puppy


This is a double disc career retrospective for a supposed seminal German industrial band, hyped to the tenth degree as innovators and pioneers of the electro-industrial movement. It is horrible.

This band has been around since the mid-eighties, as far as my knowledge in music reaches I could find just the slightest hints on to who they are, but after listening to their music I could not care less. Industrial is supposed to be a brutal assault on your ears, it is supposed to be hard, heavy and loud – and all that came across my speakers was the lightest, wimpiest excuse for industrial I have ever heard.

It was painful for me to listen through the entire two disc set, the music was so utterly simple and devoid of any kind of discernable differences, it sounds like they wrote one song and remixed it over and over and over, just adding different vocals for each track (and sometimes I even called that into question). I struggle to find something to like about this release, to find some reason as to why it has been called ‘a must have’ or ‘revolutionary’ by the few reviews I have read; but my passion and love of industrial music melts when I hear this woeful album.

I try in each one of my reviews to think of something happy to say, to think of something nice to help out the bands and record labels – I want to be a nice guy! But sometimes the music is just so bland, boring, unoriginal and horrid that I cant even say the production sounds good.

These guys have been going at it for at least twenty years, and frankly, they suck.

Reviewed by: Samuel Aaron