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..........For those of you not in the know, Pictshifter have been around for about six years now, with numerous releases on Earache Records, including 1992's "Submit" EP, 1993's "Desensitized", and the brilliant 1996 "Infotainment?". Among the converted were the folks at MCA records, who released Pitchshifter's latest effort, "www.pitchshifter.com," which has been hailed by critics as "a modern industrial classic", showcases a band utilising all their creative powers to entertain, to question and to break new musical ground. But the roots of Pitchshifter extend right back to the early 1990s, and the burgeoning industrial metal underground.

.......... Pitchshifter's live show are always compulsive (and some times dangerous), stage invasions huge and frequent, exploding sound systems and the odd broken limb not unheard of. Performing songs taken mostly from the album "www.pitchshifter.com", the band stomped and kicked and pounded their songs into the ground until they were hardly recognizable, all to the extreme delight of the screaming masses that serve as Pitchshifters fans. The English drum-n-bass tinged metal outfit has fused punk riffs and break beats into a wall of energy that has earned the group a loyal following in their homeland as well as here in the States. The band's video for tracks like 'Underachiever' became MTV satples in Europe, and the likes of Korn, Tool, Ministry, Biohazard and Girls Against Boys paid their respects by inviting PSI to support them at key shows. A mysterious crop circle formation in the shape of the infamous Pitchshifter 'Eye' logo even appeared in a field near the Phoenix Festival in 1995, shortly before a mid-song stage invasion during the band's daylight set short circuited the main stage .

..........The band's sound has changed dramatically since their death metal/industrial beginnings, mutating in 1998 into a snotty, British digital punk escapade. For Pitchshifter, it was now time to make another musical quantum leap. 'www.pitchshifter.com' is that leap, a 13-track set of radical outpourings in which Pitchshifter trivialize yet another hybrid musical genre. They have a punk mentality, and Drum & Bass is the punk of the '90s. It just seemed natural to make these rhythms the backbone of our ideas." Using their website to further spread the PSI conspiracy, and with the addition of wunderkind live guitarist and notorious techno wizard Jim Davies (the man who wrote the licks for the Prodigy's 'Firestarter' and 'Breath') the creation of the monster LP that is 'www.pitchshifter.com' commenced. "Pitchshifter are awesome programmers, and what we did was just bring all their live guitars and drums into that environment. Once that shit hit the hard drive, there was no stopping us from making and manipulating the sonic boom that this record became.

By Randy Cohen

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