When you first begin to perceive the violence of everyday life, "industrial" begins to make sense to you. Angst seems like a viable alternative to happiness, and detachment a way to taste the ugliness of your jaded world without having to eat it up like the grotesque syncophants that surround you.

Which is all well and good. Angst is clearly among the top ten creative influences in pop culture today, and you can run down the list of its prides, finding industrial somewhere between James Dean and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." The backlash of this burgeoning influence is the ugly fact that angst needs to be done right to be effective. The angst- ridden want to identify with truly disturbed, unhappy people, just like us. And when an artist starts to lose their angst, we bitter ones tend to lose interest. Remember how pissed- off Bono used to be? Now he's smiling every time you see him! That bastard! I hope he dies a slow, painful death!

Ahem. Life In The So-Called Space Age is the miserable third release from God Lives Underwater, and hopefully their last. Their previous record, Empty, possessed sparks of ingenuity, rage, and that evasive angst, suggesting strong possibilities for the group's future. Life In The So-Called Space Age lacks any spark, contenting itself with serving up pseudo- angst cliches, over- enervatingly ponderous beats and yesterday's electro flavors. Its length is seemingly infinite, whipping the dead horse of a genre that only lives today because of a select few that periodically emerge from their ivory towers to grace us with the inspiration which appears to evade God Lives Underwater. It's an exhausting listen, not because it beats you down with its energy, but because it's too obnoxious to sleep to, and so slow- tempoed that it inspires only lethargy.

-James P. Wisdom