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LABEL: Dance Division RELEASE DATE: November 15, 1999 GENRE: Hard Trance, Acid, Orchestral
// review by SoyBomb

Destiny's Wrath.

Ohhhh my. Oh, oh, my.

At this point, Kai Tracid, the German-born DJ and music producer whose last name defines his music: a mixture of trance and acid, had enough experience under his belt with many other aliases and was finally finding a bit more large-scale success with this one. He already had one album under his belt and was ready to release his sophomore album, Trance & Acid, and Destiny's Path served as the lead single. I don't know how it sold any copies after that.

Let's start at the beginning with the Video Mix, obviously the one heard by the highest number of individuals, either through the music video or possibly on the radio if you were lucky enough to get a disc jockey willing to play it. In typical fashion, Kai Tracid begins with the beeping of one of his signature sounds, something I like to call the "faux wind flute synth" as a typical bass and drum buildup lays the foundation. Slightly off-key synths continue the journey, but then...IT happens.

The voice.

The voice of Jade 4U, a vocalist whose popularity peaked in the early 1990s. Here, she's focused more on spoken word than any actual singing, and I'll be brutally honest: I don't think there has been a whinier, more depressing voice in an electronic music song throughout history. Her lyrics are bleak enough, ones such as "This is when you realize that you were born / And that you'll gonna die without having any influence in it", but her overwhelmingly moaning inflections just pierce through the brain like a skewed icepick shot out of a cannon. And it ruins the entire song. It just ruins it. It ruins the otherwise not terrible piano backing later on and the cheesy attempt at emotional trance later on.

I was hoping that other songs would save the day and minimalize use of The Voice. The Orchestral Mix is... oh, sorry, I spelled that wrong. Apparently it's the Orchester Mix... is exactly what you'd expect: a slightly more orchestrated version of a song already prepared with pianos and backing strings. Fans of classical music and epic movie soundtracks might enjoy this... if it weren't for... you know.

Suddenly... BLAM! The hardcore pounding of the Warmduscher Remix approacheth! Now here's some hardcore acid for you! And for the first four minutes, it's in your face, no apologies, just pounding and some dark bass. I love the little acid hook he uses, simple though it is. There's only one problem: the vast majority of this song has NOTHING to do with Destiny's Path, only stopping briefly for a bit of chord use from the original for less than a minute in an interlude that can only be described as "odd and out of place". But then again, it doesn't use The Voice, so it gets my official Seal of Approval.

Next is the Energy Mix, which is an alternate way of saying "Extended Mix". Luckily, this one is made up of more instrumentation, rather than a greater quantity of vocals, so it's more listenable. But Jade 4U is still there, hiding in the shadows, ready to pounce and wail in an instant. And of course, if you ONLY want the wailing, there's The Voice, a track that features just the vocals and nothing in the background. You... you don't want that.

If there was one Kai Tracid I never want to hear again, it's Destiny's Path. Only the sweet sidetracked Warmduscher mix makes this package worth visiting. Regrettably, Destiny's Path solidifies the old adage that one bad apple spoils the bunch. Unfortunately, that one apple was squeezed too hard, and the juice went everywhere.


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