Spirit In The Systemby The Qemists

I first got to see the Qemists live at a music festival, and they were great. They played just before Pendulum, but were hardly overshadowed for it, because their first album was just pure quality. "Join the Q" is the album The Prodigy have always wanted to make, so I was immediately sold on them as the third part of what I consider to be a trinity of live drum & bass performers (alongside Pendulum and Chase & Status.) Now, their second album has been out for a while, and it is rather disappointing.

Similarly to Chase & Status, who made pretty traditional drum & bass on their first album and then went on to make a much more commercial type of drum & bass (with lots of collaborations with other artists, some of them capable of making drum & bass, others not so much) and Qemists have done basically exactly the same. The difference between the two groups of that Qemists have basically attracted that don't work at all with their style, and also that few of the ten tracks contained on "Spirit In The System" are any good.

Take the first track for instance. Qemists? Great. Enter Shikari? Pretty good. Putting them together? Doesn't seem to work. Take It Back, as the track is called, starts of promisingly but simply ends up repetitive and boring. Hurt Less, featuring Jenna G, is quite a bit better, but it still falls very much short of the great tracks on the first half of the Qemists' previous album. Renegade is pretty good as well, with a catchy and powerful riff, and it is, in my opinion, the best track on the record. The others are very disappointing. If you want to buy a Qemists album, buy "Join the Q", not "Spirit In the System". The discrepancy in terms of quality is painfully obvious.