“Fuck the rules—that’s the rough translation of OU’s mission statement. Steeped in the streets of the Beijing jazz scene, OU (pronounced “O”) has emerged with a debut that challenges head-on the stagnant energy of the modern prog space. Striking a masterful balance of joviality, tranquility, and ferocity, OU have emerged from the underground to spread their idiosyncratic brand of futureprog.” The future is NOUW, olde man!
Confession Time! Steel Druhm has been wracked with guilt since underrating the first Fullforce album. Now he finally gets a chance to atone as he reviews the new opus by this melodic metal supergroup from Sweden.
Well, here’s a release I can easily see falling through the Angry Metal Cracks. One is the first (and maybe last) release by a supergroup of sorts led by Michael Andersson, vocalist for Swedish melodic metallers Cloudscape and featuring members of such renowned acts as Dream Evil, Hammerfall and Yngwie Malmsteen. Now, we all know supergroups can be very iffy propositions and Fullforce is no different. It seems whenever a group of talented musicians get jammed into a room to write and record, disaster is as likely to result as triumph. So where does this one fall? Pretty much exactly in the middle of the two extremes. There’s some top notch, super melodic metal here and some rather generic, boring duds. What makes this album of particular annoyance to Steel Druhm is how good the good stuff is. With some real winners on display, its a total buzz kill to have roughly half the album fizzle out and fail to keep the momentum going Fullforce (yeah, you knew it was gonna happen at some point). OK, it’s time for your slightly bitter host to examine One in a non-bitter fashion.
