Sybreed is a Swiss industrial and/or cybermetal band, who put a bunch of futuristic electronic synth and ambient keyboard elements into their music. The bunch formed in 2003 and ‘Antares’ is the band’s second album. And while it’s quite good, they lose the plot in the last chapters.

Most of the eleven songs on ‘Antares’ are high paced, futuristic pieces of well-varied metal, with grunts, screams and clean singing, sometimes tied together with catchy choruses and always with tons of keyboard futuristic noise going on. At first there is an obvious Fear Factory resemblance. Especially the riffs and the way they are played are quite similar. Especially so with ‘Revive My Wounds’, track three on the record. That one sounds very much like FF’s ‘Resurrection’, off of the ‘Obsolete’ album. –You know, the one with the silly sci-fi-video and all the 01010101010101`s flying through the screen-. Furthermore they’re also a bit like Mnemic, only better, so fuck that comparison.
The band mostly distinguishes itself from Fear Factory with their various vocal styles. After a view spins this vocal variety starts to work quite well. It grows on you. Also the metallic robotic quality of it all takes some getting used to, but after that it all sounds right.
There are some dreadful things about this album as well, like the incredibly awful chorus on ‘Emma’, the album opener.

‘Let me hate you and never save you from yourself’ are among others, the words of the chorus. This sappiness is sung with a clean voice, but very out of place in the song, and of course very bad.
Also, there is a lack of innovation guitar wise. The riffs sound very familiar. They do go well with the music though so this is only a small issue.
The last negative mention goes to the song ‘Ethernity’, the last track on the album. It is a nine-minute epic, full of clichés and sappiness all over the place. It’s like poppy rock, like a Bon Jovi song with keyboard and other electronics. They really should’ve left it off the CD, because it is a dire piece of crap. Oh no, this is the last: the song before last also isn’t very impressive, but merely passable.

All things considered though, this a good record. If you liked Fear Factory in their ‘Obsolete’-days, or maybe during a couple of songs on ‘Digimortal’ (there were about three good ones, I recall), you’ll like Sybreed’s ‘Antares’ as well. They just should’ve made those last two song into one good one, but if you can work around that defect, the first nine songs of ‘Antares’ are worth your money.