There’s something to be said for branching out into the unknown, to try and create something quite different from the norm. Generally, it means either a spectacular success or a hodgepodge mishmash of something that just sounds incoherent, but either way, I can generally appreciate the ideas someone has behind something, even if the execution of the idea is sometimes clumsy. Seeing a band describe their latest album as, “…a kaleidoscopic weird mix of psychedelia, electronic music, rock and experimental music” therefore immediately grabbed my attention – the question was, would it live up to its billing?
When it comes down to it, I simply don’t find this release to be what it claims. It is certainly different from the more black metal orientation their previous work has had but it generally comes across as trying to be Nine Inch Nails with progressive rock undertones/interludes, which in itself would be perfectly fine if either side really stood out for me. The simple fact is that, as a whole, this piece just feels rather average to me. I even took the time to sleep on it – something I seldom do with any type of review I do, as I prefer giving my more immediate response and it tends to be more impassioned than a cold, clinical study – music is to be experienced, not just heard, after all!
The two songs I took to the most from this are ‘Lava Bed Sahara’ – which does actually have a more psych orientated feel – and ‘Harsh and Educational’, which feels more like an early Nine Inch Nails track and had the rest of the album felt like more of these two, I would have undoubtedly given this a much better write up than I am. The two singles I’ve found released so far are ‘Radiophobia’, which is decent enough in itself, in fairness, and ‘Horizon Ignited’ which feels a bit plodding in the main in comparison to a lot of the rest of the album with its slower pace and the use of the soft/loud approach to add emphasis on to chorus and pre-chorus, but which is – the BPM excepted – a bit more indicative of the feel of the rest of the album.
There just feels like an over reliance to head towards already trodden ground and changing up the pace at times during a song – as per the first single ‘Horizon Ignited’ – doesn’t really alter this. It’s not an awful piece, I would like to stress that here, it just seems to lack something to make it genuinely stand out as a really good collection of tracks. As alluded to earlier, more along the lines of ‘Lava Bed Sahara’ or ‘Harsh and Educational’ would have led to me liking this a lot more, so it’s possible that I’m feeling a touch more frustration at these two hints of what could have been, which has led to a fairly negative review, rather than it being actually bad. I’ve just heard so many other bands that sound like they want to clone Nine Inch Nails and the overall feel of this is along those lines, rather than the experimental feel that was promised.
- ‘Hostile’ is released on 12 February. You can get your copy HERE.
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