As if Nostradamus himself called it and rubbed in all-a-y'all's faces, Cakewalk Rapture is visited by Second Coming, the follow-up to the highly touted Piscis Rapture Expansion. Galbanum Second Coming Rapture Expansion brings to the line aggressively energetic dance synths, the most bone-rattling techno and electro basses, industrial FX and oodles and oodles of arpeggiations.

All of this arrives in 400 presets based on 600 MB of custom made resources. Wondering what Second Coming is all about? Galbanum's Andrew Souter says it so poetically that I can almost imagine the striped shirt, beanie, bongo set and rolled cigarette:

"The forces of nihilism and decadence collide with humanity in a collision of Hadron proportions. A postmodern peak-hour battle of Armageddon wages on the floor of the big room. Psychoacoustic weapons of mass destruction decimate the sub-woofers and dissolve the self. Accelerated aural mutations breed cybernetic nano-bots which bring about the singularity through tempo-synched white noise bursts. Fight or flight mechanisms, manufactured adrenaline rushes, and FUD disinformation campaigns battle for mankind's mental solvency. Second Coming provides a prophetic, techno-infused score to The End, offered in full technicolor and stereophonics. It's a social caveat, wrapped up in a full spectrum carnival, which warns us all to keep the battle within and identify the true opponent as ourselves."

And who is Galbanum Second Coming aimed for?

"Shock-and-awe sultans of swing and scrappy subterranean sunset soldiers seeking stupendous sound sorcery, stop searching and simply submit to superior scholarly skill. Subjugate silence, snub scantly slender sonance, secede from slanderously simple sensations, and suppress scandalously spineless sonics. Spew sub-harmonic shrapnel, sling splendid super-sonic spears, secure synthetic synaptic swords shrouded in secrecy, and strenuously stir up the signal with some sensationally stout sonic science. Swarm to our superluminal sonata and score steadfast sound with Second Coming."

I guess that means it works for a variety of electronic music styles as well as TV, film and video game scoring. But while Beck considers rewriting some of his earlier works, I'll lay it down for you:

This tantalizing tidbit of towering trips and textures truly trumps the tolerated tangle of techno tinkering taken thoughtlessly by tonal twiddlers. Tremors tremble; tumultuous timbres tingle, twisting turbulently through trenches towards the telepathic tantrums that thou thinks though troublesomely transfer. Time to trash these tedious typings, typically thesaurus tipped, though this time, totally transposed through tangents that try to top tantamount textual tribulations. Take that!

Another interesting piece -- perhaps more interesting than a battle of alliteration between two worthy adversaries -- is the feature set of this new Rapture Expansion.

• Stereo Waveforms that produce sounds with massively huge, 3D-like spatial images! Stereo waveforms also give each preset a unique psychoacoustic signature through interaural phase differences allowing sounds to stick out of dense mixes without resorting to excessive effects usage that can muddy the mix.
• Obsessive and extensive use of the Modulation Matrix and MIDI controller assignments which enable complex sound morphing. Say goodbye to static and lifeless presets.
• 80 custom, 64-bit, 65,536 point LFO Waveforms which allow complex fractal-like LFO shapes that cause modulations to morph between slow shifting and fast FM-like behavior.
• Velocity sensitivity, dynamic envelopes, FX input controls and other techniques are also used to produce incredibly expressive and dynamic presets which encourage performance, inspire creativity, and enhance usability.
• 40 velocity cross-faded multi-waveform SFZ instruments which allow velocity dependent shifting and morphing of timbre without even using filters.
• 16 special new "Spectrum Sample" SFZ instruments which stretch across eight octaves and consist of perfectly diffuse band-limited spectrums made up of over 2,000 voices each.
• Second Coming was developed for Rapture version 1.1 or later and makes extensive use of the its new features including new filter modes, new DSP transforms, new signal routing, tempo-synched envelopes, 64bit waveforms, stereo waveforms and more.