Apoptygma Berzerk take on a new direction with Harmonizer. They have chosen Alon Cohen from New York to co-produce this album. Alon Cohen has worked in the past with artists like: 98 Degrees, Brian McKnight, Amanda Ghost, The Cardigans, Ice T and Capone N Noreaga. Of course change may be good sometimes, but it's certainly not panacea.

The album kicks off with the track "More Serotonin... Please". It's a 1 1/2 min long intro song, and it's nothing to write home about, even for an intro song. "Suffer in silence" is the first real song, and it starts with the same beat as the intro song. It's a highly simplistic, poppy song, that will either appeal to you, or it will get on your nerves. I would place my money on the later though.

It's then time for "Unicorn" and "Until the End of The World". These are two of the better tracks on Harmonizer. Once again the words "simplistic" and "poppy" apply here. In fact they apply to the whole album so i'll refrain from using them again. These are two nicely done songs though, catchy, and will no doubt find their place on a club playlist.

And then .. it all goes downhill.

So, moving on with the album, i found many songs that were totally indifferent to me (O.K. Amp - Let Me Out, Pikachu (!), Detroit Tickets, Photoshop Sucks), songs that if played many times would only force me to scream: "OK AMP! LET ME OUT!". There are still a couple more nice songs, but still nothing special that would compel me to give them repeated listenings (Rollergirl, Spindizzy). The album closes with the happy-sounding and upbeat "Something i should know", which unfortunately, sounds TOO MUCH like a remix to ... no i won't say it. (Out of respect for our international readers who wouldn't know what the hell i'm talking about!)

Conclusion time. Simply put: The magic is no longer here - It has panicked and left the building. There is no killer track. Just 3 or 4 (tops) decent tracks, but nothing overly good or original, and many boring, indifferent fillers - not a good mixture. I was dissapointed. Fortunately, we can still look forward to listening to APB this summer on rockwave festival, because of their previous work, which i respect and like much more.