Seizing the opportunity to remix 1998's Anima Animus LP and 'Eraser Cut' EP, The Creatures have unsurprisingly forged further into the dark side for this album of mangled mutations.  These are songs already on the black-rubber balaclava side of extreme, and Budgie's urgent percussion combined with Siouxsie's predatory shrieks are perfect fodder for the remix coven.

So Howie B takes a knife to the sexually watchful 'Prettiest Thing'; Black Dog unbolt the beats of 'Guillotine' into disjunctive abstraction, and Witchman has his evil way with 'Say'.  Twice.  Running its finger along the cutting edge, Hybrids is a bravely bloody genetic experiment.  

3/5  

Victoria Segal

It's a bit late in the 20th century to still be in thrall to the punk spirit of '77, so it comes as a relief to find that Siouxsie Sioux one of the Sex Pistols' coterie in the infamous Bill Grundy affair, and the face that launched a thousand Goth backcombs is off in search of new revolutions.  An album of remixes of tracks by Siouxsie's post-Banshees band, The Creatures, "Hybrids" could well have looked to the post PIL career of John Lydon for a list of pratfalls that an old punk could make - in summary, the straightforward techno rumble of Leftfield's 'Open Up', good experimental excursions into the electronic avant-garde, rather sad pleas for credibility. But 'Hybrids' actually works best when it's undergoing strange, terrible mutations at the hands of a satisfyingly perverse coven of remixers; The Black Dog, tearing "Guillotine" into scraps of noise, and pasting them back into a bloody sonic collage, or The Beloved, coupling the vacant dub of "Disconnected" to a gaunt, wasted disco pulse.  About halfway through, it becomes uncomfortably obvious that the best tracks are the ones that obscure the original songs behind sheets of edgy, spun-out electronica. Conceptually, though, "Hybrids" clutches the underside of the zeitgeist with dark passion. Here's an old punk that's not to be written off.  

6 out of 10