By Jase Walker
The musical world that I exist in at the moment seems often dominated by Australia and more recently Denmark for producing proggy metal that digests vast swathes of pop, funk and sometimes soul elements. Yet recently he feels like there’s this growing monster lurking in Germany where younger bands are deciding to stick their fingers up at established convention and turning the approach to what can be considered heavy music totally on its head with doing more than just elements and going full send with bridging the gap between where the fat riff is and sounding like a full on Eurodance song.
The audacity of AVRALIZE opening with a song like ‘medicine’ that has a piano melody that could literally be straight out of the early ’90s dancefloor fillers before ripping out a riff that sounds like it’s been written on a banjo is absolutely nuts.
There’s no respect for convention here, AVRALIZE are taking the rule book and rather than ripping it up, they’re literally setting the fucking thing on fire and kicking it down the stairs.
Admittedly the fourteen tracks on this album are a little bit misleading as they’ve opted to put in quite a fair number of small thirty-ish second filler tracks that serve to bridge the gap between songs or function as an intro so it’s actually ten tracks total but i’ll forgive them on the basis of artistic intent.
‘liminal’ takes on the previous artistic direction laid out by their 2024 ‘FREAKS’ and pushes it even further along into more bizarre spaces, mixing in yet more Eurodance themes, bringing back saxophone here and there. However this isn’t to say they stray too far from just letting rip and writing some facemelting riffs that’d provoke a pit in seconds of them starting.
The title track of ‘liminal’ is a good show of the pop influences while being present, don’t completely drown out AVRALIZE’s knack for writing a breakdown that while brief, goes so hard that even your best mate would be fair game if you were stood next to them in the crowd when they play this live (which they undoubtedly are doing on their current headline tour).
Tracks like ‘upside down’ show off AVRALIZE’s more techy side with echoes of playing that remind me of Unprocessed while ‘bite my tongue’ focused by far on the more pop elements with some bizarre smash cuts to salsa which feel jarring at first but just really works.
To follow up an incredible album like ‘FREAKS’ so quickly with an album like liminal is absolutely insane work and despite coming so soon after the previous album, shows that AVRALIZE are already starting to build and experiment with how far they can push the limits of their style.
There’s just no real barriers to what this band sees as possible and not only that, earlier this year at RADAR Festival I got a bit of a taste of the newer material live and to say I’m buzzed for more of this is an insane understatement. All I’m currently sitting waiting for right now is AVRALIZE dropping a headliner tour where I can get hopefully well over a solid hour with at least half of liminal making up the set.
This album summarizes a true fresh approach to what heavy music can be, a young bunch of lads that pay tribute to musical history of all walks while completely and utterly disregarding what the rulebook says. AVRALIZE are fully on a warpath right now and have cut the breaks on the vehicle they’re on, a full runaway train of energy that is totally unapologetic for itself. Some might think they can predict where they’ll go next but I can guarantee you, they absolutely fucking can’t.
- ‘liminal‘ is out now.