Chainreactor – The Essence (EP – ProNoize / Dark Dimensions)
Genre/Influences: Dark-Electro, Industrial-Trance.
Format: Digital.
Background/Info: Last year the German band Chainreactor released the impressive “Interlinked”-album, which to me sounded like a move back to the early sound of the project, but with a more sophisticated sound and more professional production. “The Essence” is a totally new work featuring four songs plus three remixes.
Content: This work is clearly revealing the most Trance-driven production of Chainreactor thus far. We’ve been used to hearing a kind of Industrial-Rave sound, but the new songs are moving a step further. This is a perfect adaptation of Dark-Electro into Industrial-Trance music. There are no vocals, just spoken samplings. Remixes were made by Crashzkitt, Antibody and Stromtod.
+ + + : This EP reveals a different side of Chainreactor; the sound isn’t totally innovative, but clearly into a kind of Chainreactor V.2-version. It’s a different kind of Industrial-Trance, which is more carried by Dark-Electro elements. It’s hard to say which from the 4 songs is the best one; they all are great artistic exposures, but I’ll tip “Nebula” and “Impulskontrolle”. There also is an interesting choice of remixers; except Antibody I never heard of both other artists. But Chainreactor has clearly inspired those artists and especially Crashzkitt and Antibody both did a really great job.
– – – : I’m sure some ‘classical’ Dark-Electro lovers will not be that enthusiastic discovering this explicit Trance-direction. I really love it and I regret that there’s no physical format available for this masterpiece!
Conclusion: Chainreactor strikes back with a bang! “The Essence” is maybe not that innovative, but it’s a damned great production and one of the best I’ve heard this year.
Best songs: “Nebula”, “Nebula – Antibody Remix”, “Impulskontrolle”, “The Essence”, “HAL”.
Rate: (9 ½).
Artist: www.facebook.com/Chainreactor
Label: www.darkdimensions.de / www.facebook.com/pages/Dark-Dimensions-Label-Group/486014725206
About Chainreactor
Chainreactor was set up in 2009 by German producer Jens Minor, later joined by Kay Schäfer, mixing industrial, trance, EBM and dark-electro into a hard, danceable sound. Discogs lists the albums “X-Tinction” (2009), “Insomniac” (2011), “Mass Driver” (2014), Dirt (2015) and Decayed Values (2017), all on Pro Noize, plus the self-released downloads “Plague”, “Subject To Change” and “The Silence & The Noise”. The seventh album Interlinked was released on ProNoize / Dark Dimensions in 2020 and reviewed on Side-Line in May 2020; Minor and Schäfer discussed it in the ‘Click Interview’ with Chainreactor of July 2020.
“The Essence” was released by ProNoize / Dark Dimensions on 26 March 2021 as a digital-only EP; the label described it on Bandcamp as “4 tracks and 3 remixes of raw and dark industrial techno”. The tracks are “The Essence”, “Nebula”, “HAL”, “Impulskontrolle”, “Nebula (Crashzkitt Remix)”, “Impulskontrolle (Antibody Remix)” and “Nebula (Stromtod Remix)”. The review above lists the Antibody remix under “Nebula”; the Bandcamp and Discogs tracklists attach it to “Impulskontrolle”. No production credits are listed on the release pages.
Chainreactor has continued as Jens Minor’s solo project with Techno Body Device (2022), Venom (2023), the tenth album War Machinery (2025) and the EP Melting Point X1 (2026), all on ProNoize / Dark Dimensions. “The Essence” is the project’s first digital-only EP and its fourth Side-Line review.
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