Angry Metal Guy

Scar Symmetry // The Unseen Empire
Rating: 3.0/5.0 — Good, but uh, what the hell happened?
Label: Nuclear Blast [EU | US]
Websites: scarsymmetry.com | myspace.com/scarsymmetry
Release Dates: EU: 2011.04.15 | US: 05.17.2011

A couple years ago I reviewed Scar Symmetry‘s Dark Matter Dimensions and to my surprise I thoroughly enjoyed it. While I gave it a very good score at the time (4.5/5.0), I made the comment that the band was a little formulaic. It seemed to me that the Scar Symmetry could have worked harder to break out of the mold that they seemed to be trying (very hard) to fit into. That mold, otherwise known as “tech-meets-Soilwork” is basically techy death metal with big, catchy choruses. And, while I admit that Scar Symmetry is an much better band than Soilwork as far as writing catchy melodies, there are times when the music feels like it’s just built around this structure. I suggested that the band try to break out of that mold and build on the techy side. Continue reading

Amaranthe // Amaranthe
Rating: 0.5/5.0 — Slick, Catchy, Soulless.
Label: Spinefarm
Websites: myspace.com/amaranthemetal
Release Dates: EU: 2011.04.13 | US: 04.19.2011

Amaranthe has three vocalists. Just let that sink in for a while. From what I can tell, not one of those vocalists plays an instrument. Instead, they found three “attractive” people to do vocals for them. The first is a woman, who sounds like a pop singer (think E Type) and who I guarantee you cannot name a Slayer record. The second is a screamy dude. He’s got a beard (’cause he’s tough and angsty, you see) and he screams, but not too much (he must be very, very, very bored on stage). And then there’s the ‘power metal’ vocalist (Berg from Dream Evil) who’s just as over-produced as the chick vocalist and is there to get 14 year old girls all silly over his perfectly groomed dreadlocks. Behind them are several soulless session musicians (from Mercenary, Dragonland and Engel). Though, frankly, this is a band that is functionally made of session musicians, since integrity seems to be lacking. Continue reading

Soilwork // The Panic Broadcast
Rating: 3.0/5.0 — Commercial as hell…
Label: Nuclear Blast (EU | US)
Website: soilwork.org | myspace.com/soilwork
Release Dates: EU: 02.07.2010 | US: 07.13.2010

Wow. So, it’s been like 10 years since I’ve listened to Soilwork and it turns out that they don’t sound at all even remotely the same. Sometimes a band falls off your radar and you don’t even think about them at all and honestly, Soilwork is one such band. Now, it’s probably not a surprise to anyone else but I was in utter shock when I turned on The Panic Broadcast to discover that the Gothenburg sound had totally been replaced by eurocore! See, now you’re laughing at my ignorance, but I’m a bit surprised. See, in Angry Metal World™ the last record that Soilwork released was actually The Chainheart Machine in 2000. And back then, these guys were playing a not-entirely-novel, but very, very good version of the Gothenburg sound. Turns out in the much lamer real world Soilwork has had a bunch of records and gotten a new vocal style, a new sound and hyper-produced. Continue reading

Menemic // Sons of the System
Rating: 2.0/5.0 – Blasé, cliché and just generally mediocre
Label: Nuclear Blast (EU | US)
Website: myspace.com/mnemic | mnemic.com
Release Dates: EU: 15.01.2010 | US: 01.26.2010

Mnemic has been around in the æther for a while but I’ve never given them a proper listen until now. The band has good promo, they’ve toured Europe twice with metal giants (like ‘em or not) Metallica, they look like real metal dudes and they’ve got cred because a couple people I know compared them to Meshuggah back when they first came out. Unfortunately, Sons of the System sounds a lot less like Meshuggah and a lot more like Sonic Syndicate. This record is another convergence point for things that I’m not really keen on in the world of metal and I’ll give you a short run-down.

At its base Mnemic is a groovecore band. The riffs are meant to be groovy, the drums tight and heavy and the atmosphere built to move your body to. Now and again they pull that off, but I think they’ve got a couple of things working against them on this front. First, groovecore sounds more and more like metalcore in my ears every time I listen to it because the production values are leaning more in the direction of triggered drums, “soaring vocal” choruses a la Killswitch Engage and a glut of predictable and uninteresting breakdowns. While expertly executed and smoothly produced, Sons of the System follows this formula off the cliff. The soaring vocals are completely forgettable, the chuggy parts feel thin and very rarely is there a groove that makes me want to do anything other than listen to something else.

This is not to say that there is nothing good going on here, but it’s few and far between. The track “Fate” has its moments, for example, and there are a couple of melodies early on that caught my ear  (the intro to “The Erasing” is a great example of this) but they never moved me to anything more than a “huh.” To top it off, the disc just gets pretty repetitive. Since the band isn’t doing anything very interesting melodically throughout the whole 55 minutes of this disc, the tracks all blend into eachother, with each chorus mimicing the choruses before and after it and the riffs repeating ad nauseum. The advertised “progressiveness” that has been flaunted in reference to this new record is few and far between (I count about 3 places where the record moves into something beyond standard groove riffs) and mainly it just sounds like Meshuggah rip-off rather than something new and interesting.

There is a sound that is forming with these groovecore/metalcore bands that are coming from Europe that I’m thinking about dubbing with the very down-my-nose kind of expression: Eurocore. Sonic Syndicate sounds pretty much like this as well, with production values that bore and fail to impress, groovy riffs that are everything you’ve ever heard before and a formula that, in general, disappoints because of its predictability and lack of originality. I guess I understand that there’s pressure on these bands to try to be as commercial as possible in order to stay in the limelight, but then again.. I can’t think of anyone I know who actually likes music that sounds like this.