Not entirely sure how Gary Numan tends to operate these days, but from what I can tell he writes some demos then gives them to producer Ade Fenton to spruce up - popping back every six months to see how he's getting on. Joined at the hip for the last decade, the duo's working relationship seems to go beyond being mutually beneficial, transcending into mutually dependency.

Not an ideal way to write music, and to be honest, on Dead Son Rising it shows. The album rotates between cliched, guitar riff-driven Industrial Rock and a raft of solemn instrumentals that plaigarise NIN right down to the crooked, one-fingered piano style that bears the hallmark of many a Trent Reznor-themed track. Numan's punch drunk vocals often struggle to ignite the music.

On the plus side, the production is very good - Fenton evidently knows how to chemiclean some pretty average source material, and one or two tracks do stick stubbornly in the subconscious (For The Rest of My Life and We Are The Lost), but overall the whole ethos behind Dead Son Rising is a flaccid one. The album brings nothing new to the Industrial Rock table, or can even offer a twist to the genre in a way that a band like IAMX, for example, might.

These days, Numan's career is pretty much about the artist making a living by going out on the road and playing the rock star, and if that's as far as his ambition goes who am I to argue? In fact, I sympathise; trying to make innovative electronic music - as he once did - is virtually impossible these days, and so it goes back to the song, and this is where Numan struggles.

Whereas writing alternative pop used to be like water of a duck's back for him, it now seems like the pond has dried up, with clever production and effects - albeit precise and detailed - acting as a poor substitute. There's certainly nothing on Dead Son Rising that comes within a cat's whisker of matching Numan's former post-punk brilliance.

Perhaps Numan should bring his career full circle and take time out to jam with his old backing band (Dramatis). A more stimulating environment - working with real, talented musicians on a daily basis - has to be more inspiring than going through the motions playing music-by-mouse rock for a dead sub-genre.