Carrying an unlit torch and sporting smeared raccoon eyes, Cex has returned to the land of the living, and this time he's discarded the rap game in order to immerse himself neck-deep in Wax Trax-style industrial wreckage. Rjyan Kidwell's first outing for new label Jade Tree is also significant for being the first Cex album that fully deviates from the splatter-IDM template upon which his career has thus far hinged. The IDM ghetto is no place for a man as engagingly charismatic as Cex, and if he hasn't quite reached superstar status just yet, he's well on his way.

As he wryly intones on "Dive Off a Mountain", Kidwell's vocal timbre is eerily reminiscent of the Antichrist Superstar himself, while the production/instrumentation are pure Reznorian splendor -- gnarly synth dirges that slowly descend into the pits of hell. The industrialized Cex V3.0 is perhaps more palpable for delicate eardrums than his rhyme-spittin' alter-ego or goofy glitchtronica guise, but this stuff reeks of paranoid boredom; Kidwell is the classic ADD-addled wunderkind who refuses to be pinned to any one scene, but in the process of playing musical hopscotch he's lost sight of what made him such a big playa in the first place.