''Formula'' (released 1995) is an album by industrial/metal band OLD (Old Lady Drivers). It is their last full-length to date, and the group was condensed to a duo, with James Plotkin handling all instruments and Alan Dubin handling all vocals. The album is a rather drastic departure from OLD's earlier works, abandoning much of their

extreme metal Extreme metal is a loosely defined umbrella term for a number of related heavy metal music subgenres that have developed since the early 1980s. It has been defined as a "cluster of metal subgenres characterized by sonic, verbal, and visual tran ...

roots to instead explore

techno Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...

, IDM and electro, with Dubin's vocals processed through a

Vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

. According to ''Terrorizer Magazine'' (article named "Lost Classics & Follies"), it is allegedly the lowest-selling album in the history of

Earache Records Earache Records is a British independent record label, music publisher and management company founded by Digby Pearson in 1985, based in Nottingham, England, with offices in London and New York. The label helped to pioneer extreme metal by r ...

. Though not well received at the time of its release, retrospective reviews are more positive. Allmusic referred to the album as a notable precursor of

industrial techno Industrial techno is a subgenre of techno and industrial dance music that originated in the 1990s. Characteristically, it incorporates influences from the bleak, noisy sound and aesthetics of early industrial music acts, particularly Cabaret Vol ...

Track listing

All songs written and arranged by Dubin/Plotkin. #Last Look – 10:58 #Break (You) – 5:57 #Devolve – 5:53 #Under Glass – 7:54 #Thug – 4:59 #Rid – 5:44 #Amoeba – 8:17

Personnel

* Alan Dubin: All vocals *

James Plotkin James Plotkin is an American guitarist and producer known for his role in bands such as Khanate and OLD but with an extensive catalogue outside these bands. He has played guitar for Phantomsmasher and Scorn and continues to remix tracks for ba ...

: Guitars, bass, keyboards, drum programming, tapes, sampler

References

1995 albums OLD (band) albums Earache Records albums Albums produced by James Plotkin {{1990s-metal-album-stub