As much as I enjoy having a feeling with my favorite moody sludge, or letting out that single, definitely masculine tear down my cheek with a beautiful progressive concept album, an urge persists for the thrill of the arena-sized riff and rattle of proper heavy metal. You know, the kind of stuff that makes you feel like you’re a pitch down when you’ve only had a pint, or allows you to imagine your engine revving with the force of at least twice its listed cylinder count.1 Timechild knows this feeling, and with their 2021 debut And Yet It Moves, they presented a solid, proto-metal-inspired outing—your Deep Purple, Rainbow, UFO, and related acts—with focused musicianship and a voice that knows how to soar.
Continuing down their chosen path, Timechild takes the feel-good sounds of hard rock past and fuses a modern-looking, 00’s radio melancholy to form their own brooding yet bolstered identity. Cuts from Blossom & Plague don’t feel far away from the T-injected dad jams of a band like Tremonti or the soulful and virtuosic AOR thump of Winery Dogs, but this unheralded Danish act plays without a notion that bands like that even exist. Hungry and targeted, Timechild instead comes off holding homage as a tool in the kit, reminiscent of fellow Scandinavian throwback act Audrey Horne. And similar to that act, one founding member, Martin Haumann, has spent much of his career far outside the trad circuit, helming the kit for the techy, thrashing Mother of All and the folky, atmospheric calls of Afsky and Myrkyr. Unfitting pedigree—and the unlisted talents of his bandmates—aside, Timechild supplies a bluesy swing and rumble (“Call of the Petrichor,” “Buried in Autumn”) that matches a band that sounds as if they’d been playing for far longer than three years.
Lead vocalist Anders Folden Brink immediately glues the experience together with his warm, gritty baritone croon. Truth is, though he’s uncredited in the metal world, Brink spent some years prior to Timechild with SEA, who boasted a less propulsive but equally rock attitude as this entity. No surprise, he shines there too, but Timechild has allowed him to lay pipe across sneaky, cutting riffs in a junkyard metal fashion (“The Dying Tide II,” “Hands of Time”)—feel good tunes held out with calloused hands. With the spectacle and machismo of peak Coverdale-Whitesnake, and backed by the kind of dark vocal layering pioneered by Alice in Chains, album highlights “Call of the Petrichor” and “Only Our Shadows Remain” see Brink both calling wildly for a stadium-sized crowd to holler yet towering above them at his most dramatic moments.
Thankfully too, despite a style rooted in retro rock, Timechild, avoids falling into the trap of yanking other band’s classic moments. That’s not to say that a Rainbow riff or two doesn’t sneak about (“Buried in Autumn,” “Only Our Shadows Remain”). But Haumann’s rhythmic bashings, though resembling the study of wunderkits like Cozy Powell (ex-Rainbow, ex-Black Sabbath), maintain a drive enough of a snappier metal bravado (“The Dying Tide Part III,” “Hands of Time”) that Timechild always feels more of this time. Similarly commonplace in today’s metal, Blossom & Plague hosts a comfortable (if bass-buried) mix and low-sparkle master. These production choices don’t cause much of a concern outside of highlighting the tight ending edits (each one from the “The Dying Tide Part III” onward) which allow tracks to taper into an extended state of nothingness. Many times I saw myself switching to my media player to confirm whether something had gone wrong—yeah this feels like a nitpick. But dead silence doesn’t do anything for the flow of this experience, especially when it can just as easily not be there.
Nevertheless, Timechild, in their sophomore strut, fulfills an important niche: the no-nonsense, housework-ready, guitar-led banger. At a 35-minute jog, Blossom & Plague rolls through steady in its heavier-weight pump. The middle section can feel a bit slow, but without a ballad to truly kill the mood, it’s manageable, especially when your floors come out clean afterwards. Admirably, these Danes stick to finding their own sound in a lane where it’s easy for others to play the arrangements that many have tested, sold, and resold. Now with two albums tucked into three years, it’s but a matter of time before Timechild strikes again. Give them a voice in the crowd if you’ve got the chance.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Mighty Music
Websites: timechildofficial.com | facebook.com/timechild
Releases Worldwide: September 1st, 2023
