It shows promise
p.m. | Seattle, Washington | 11/03/1999
(2 out of 5 stars)
"Test Department's Beating a Retreat is a fair album. The first three tracks are good, especially "Fall From Light." I also think "Cold Witness" is a good track; it is the least musical one out of the nine. The latter two tracks ("Compulsion" and "Total State Machine") are videos and I do not think they work as well with images. The other problem is this recording sounds a little short for the price of paying over $14.00. The best album to get from Test Department is The Unacceptable Face of Freedom (a masterpiece)."
Great old school industrial
leviticus85 | kalamazoo,MI | 03/30/2000
(4 out of 5 stars)
"if you want to hear what older industrial sounds like, get this. admittedly, i have not heard any other test dept releases, so i can't compare this to their other work. still, this is easily in the same league as older EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN albums like "drawings of patient o.t." and i cannot find any real flaws with it other than the fact that it is only 37 minutes long."