Dope Stars Inc.
21st Century Slave

I would be surprised if it were otherwise.

Trying to wander the web to find information about Dope Stars Inc., you encounter the most varied descriptions, from a band that takes inspiration from M. Manson, to "metal of the new millennium", not to mention the different pseudo-genres associated with the group, all, of course, written in English, French, German, even Portuguese; it's a shame since we're talking about a fundamentally Italian band. The group is led by Vittorio D'amore (known as 'Victor Love', the Italian with the guitar doesn't pay, we all know), although, to be fair, the last instrument that could be associated with the Roman industrial rock band is the guitar (despite the abundance of synthesizers).

The third work of the band titled "21st Century Slave" is once again a mix of industrial/electronic/synth with a blatant predisposition to dance remixes that could make pure metal lovers shiver. The formula of a 'catchy' title with references to more or less futuristic social conditions remains unchanged ( "Digital Warriors", "The World Machine"), along with the usual good synth bases stored in an unusually melodic industrial sound. After the opening track " Omega Drones", the heart of the album is quickly reached with the title track "21st Century Slave", featuring the usual 'looped' and mechanized chorus, thus maintaining the band's predominant characteristic, which is the constant bombardment of robust and heavy sounds generously sweetened by blatantly radio-friendly rhythms and bases (except for the radio stations in our dear 'belpaese').

Confirming the cool vibe of the CD, there's "It's Today". What leaves one perplexed is not only the redundancy of the leader and vocalist V. Love, but also noteworthy are the heavily moralistic lyrics that superficially reproach everyone for everything (starting from the album title) without considering that the added weapon of the album itself is its high and forced catchiness. Continuing along the same lines as previous works, there's the good "When I See You Smile" and the adrenaline-filled "Criminal Intents", perhaps the most successful piece of the work for its naturalness and conviction. Also good are "Outlaw Thrones" and "Neuromantics" (the latter not very original in the title, which evidently takes inspiration from the band's first and best work "Neuromance", which is symptomatic of a creativity that is not quite exceptional), and lastly, worth mentioning is the already cited "The World Machine", which offers something different and fresh in an album that feels slightly processed and squeezed.

To conclude, I would say that the album remains roughly at the level of the previous "Gigahearts" (for those who do not know, the obsession with mixing nouns related to informatics, chemistry, technology is a constant fixation of the band), however the work proves not to be on par with their early efforts and especially not up to par to compete in quality and hardness with the works of bad cousins like the almost-namesakes "Deathstars" or "A Dark Halo". Nevertheless, the disc would deserve much more consideration and publicity in the beautiful country, but this is very unlikely to happen for obvious reasons of typically Italian 'habits and customs'; if it did happen, I would be surprised, as Wikipedia teaches us.