About Us - Take a Piece (2024)

Country: India
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Apr 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

I reviewed the self-titled debut album from About Us in 2022 and pretty much everything I said in that review holds true here. Most notably, they have a truly bizarre mix of styles that sometimes works really well and sometimes leaves me wondering why. This sort of mix simply isn't done and for good reasons, because the fanbases for some of the different styles on offer here tend to hate the other styles. However, they've doubled down on this sort of thing since that debut, so it must be working for them.

They start us in relatively easy, with an opener in Come to You that's half heavy/power metal and half melodic rock. Their base style remains melodic rock, which is why they're on Frontiers, but it's fair to say that I doubt anyone else on Frontiers sounds like this. There are plenty of bands on that label who play melodic rock and plenty more who play power metal and perhaps a few that sound like both put together. However, I can't name another one who adds nu and alt metal into the mix, as About Us promptly do on Endure.

Come to You is fundamentally a melodic rock song with the sort of melodies we expect built on the sort of structure we expect, but it's bulked up with beefier guitars and notably fast drumming. I'm pretty sure Yanni Ennie is using a double bass approach here, which I don't believe I've ever heard in a melodic rock band before. Sochan Kikon takes on an escalating metal vocal at the very end of the song too. Endure, though, is melodic rock with a Hot Topic filter laid prominently over it like a blanket. Renlamo Lotha and Pona Kikon shift their guitars to rhythmic monotone riffs and djenty chords and both Sochan Kikon and whoever's adding backing vocals go trendy harsh. However, the solos are back to power metal again.

Legion mixes those approaches, building from an elegant power metal intro to djenty verses and back into power metal choruses, the melodic rock not as clear but still there in the structure, and the majority of these tracks continue to mix these approaches in different amounts. Fire with Fire is more melodic rock but with grungier guitars and Sochan Kikon singing clean but with more grit and, at the very end, another metal scream. EVH is bouncy hard rock with much more prominent keyboards from Renbomo Yanthan, so it's AOR with a little crunch. This one could easily be heavy Journey. Beautiful Misery is melodic rock that ramps up to power metal but with those alt metal touches when that sort of middle finger attitude is warranted.

About Us hail from Wokha, which is so far to the northeast of India that it's far closer to Myanmar than the majority of India, so I wonder what their local music scene sounds like. It's not the usual home for a rock band of any description, so maybe rock fans there are more accepting of this sort of wild mix. If Journey and Blind Guardian and Avenged Sevenfold are all simply rock bands there and a notable change from Bollywood soundtracks and traditional Indian music, then a band like About Us makes total sense. Here in the west, where trad metal and alt metal have two separate fanbases, especially outside the US, About Us make us wonder a lot more.

What I can say is that they're highly capable. Sochan Kikon sounds effective whatever style he's adopting at any particular moment. Check out the guitar solos in Reels for Eternity and Hope to see what a double act like Lotha and Pona Kikon can do. Ennie impresses throughout, even if it sometimes feels as if he'd be more comfortable in an extreme metal band. Yanthan rarely takes the spotlight, which holds true for bassist Soren Kikon, a third Kikon in this band, but they both deliver exactly what they need to do to support these songs.

I'm going with another 7/10 here, as I did with the About Us debut. This feels a little heavier over a forty minute stretch but it hasn't lost its melodic rock roots, especially with a thoroughly melodic song like Fortitude wrapping things up, even if Sochan Kikon gets edgy at points and there's a nice slow and heavy section early in the second half. My least favourite songs are the ones that venture deepest into the nu metal approach, Endure and Legion among them, but they stay varied too, so I'm not desperately upset. Later songs, like Hope and Beautiful Misery, strike a better balance for me, mostly unfolding in traditional melodic fashion but with the occasional edgy texture.

What I don't hear yet is something new coming out of this merger. It still sounds like a merger of two very different sounds coexisting on the same album. Maybe, if About Us keep knocking these albums out, they'll find a way to make the two sounds feel like one, at which point they'll certainly have staked out a very new claim within the genre. Best of luck to them!

Avatar - Dance Devil Dance (2023)

Country: Sweden
Style: Alternative Rock/Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 17 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Tiktok | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

My youngest son, whose tastes often match with mine, especially when it comes to thrash, is a big fan of Avatar and that's a discrepancy between us. I've never quite got their thing, because they made a conscious decision to shift style in a way that feels off to me. I wouldn't say they sold out, a claim some might make, but they definitely moved to a carefully created commercial sound with a carefully created commercial image to match it. This ninth album isn't quite that straightforward, though, because they're all over the map and it makes the whole thing feel fresh.

The title track kicks off the album with a very modern sound. The riffs are simple but urgent, with a strong beat behind them, and there's an interesting counter sound to the riffs introduced that's almost Asian. The rough modern vocals are only the first vocal approach of many here, Johannes Eckerström demonstrating some serious versatility as he shifts style to fit whatever a song might be doing at any particular point. He often shifts between clean and harsh in the same songs, with On the Beach perhaps the most obvious example, delivering the verses in a clean rock voice, then shifting to a gurgly harsh growl for effect.

I like this variety, even though I don't always like the style in play. My 6/10 rating is because not all these songs enforced their presence. Even after half a dozen times through, a few still haven't got past names on the playlist. I couldn't tell you what they sound like. However, a few were absolutely able to grab me. On the Beach was probably the first, not because of the vocals but because of the guitars. This is a heavy song to start with, the opening seagulls giving way to a pretty boring riff in the modern style, but an industrial grind shows up behind it to make it interesting and then some calypso funk appears behind the verses, which is fascinating. The song ends with a guitar trying to be a music box and succeeding.

My favourite has to be Gotta Wanna Riot, which is a quirky and fun pop metal piece, right down to Eckerström's rolling Rs and the earworm harmonisation theme that we might expect from Abba or the Beach Boys. It's almost a pop punk piece but played metal all the way. I had a blast with it, even though I'm not as sold on Hazmat Suit, which tries to reach the same goals, unsuccessfully to my ears, because it ends up as one of those supposedly aggressive pieces that are too cute for us to buy into that. There's also a chant that sounds like a dance DJ trying to get a crowd moving.

The Dirt I'm Buried In is a sassy number, with some excellent clean vocals from Eckerström and some almost Police-esque guitars. It didn't take long for me to appreciate his vocal shifts, but songs like this one underline it. He runs all over the map here, from pop to rock to metal, from clean to harsh and where harsh might mean death growls or hardcore shouts, even some bleaker parts that nod towards black metal. I expect theatricality from him but that didn't really show up until Train, the most unusual song here, which hints at soft reggae but goes to a place that's like Nick Cave trying to mimic Iggy Pop. It's another fascinating song.

Clouds Dipped in Chrome may be the most interesting, because it's the heaviest piece here, but it also finds very different moods. It starts out almost crust punk, with furious drums and a grinding guitar, but then shifts to a stylish heavy metal guitar for texture and a powerful rock vocal behind it. It's a sort of hybrid of Crass, Venom and Pantera, with something traditional trying to burst out of it. At points Eckerström goes emo but at others he goes air raid siren. There's nu metal in here too, which I usually hate, but it's such a fascinating mix that I have to remain fascinated.

And so there's a lot here, whether you're into the carefully created commercial Avatar mindset or not. I'm still tempted to go with a 7/10 because I enjoyed a lot of this, but it seems unfair to bands I gave that rating who made much more consistent albums. This is strong and fascinatingly diverse when it's on the ball but forgettable when it's off it. There's definitely 7/10 and 8/10 material this time out, but a bunch of 5/10 songs too. If I used halves, I'd be happy with a six and a half. If you're a fan, add at least a point to that.

Machine Head - Of Kingdom and Crown (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Groove/Thrash Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 26 Aug 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It's time for another history lesson, but hopefully a brief one. Robb Flynn, the vocalist and rhythm guitarist in Machine Head, founded the band in 1991 and has been the only remaining member of the original line-up since 2013, but there haven't actually been many line-up changes over a three decade period. Well, until 2019 when literally half the bend left—drummer Dave McClain, who had twenty-three years with the band, and Flynn's former partner in Violence, Phil Demmel who had a fifteen year stint on lead guitar—all because Flynn had unilaterally shifted the band's sound back towards nu metal for their ninth album, Catharsis, in 2018.

Now, I haven't heard Catharsis, but what I read about it suggests that I'd hate it. Certainly a huge amount of Machine Head fans hated it. The average rating from reviewers on Metal Archives is an embarrassing 18%, notably lower even than earlier nu metal-centric albums like Supercharger and The Burning Red, which at least make it into the thirtieth percentile. This return to a more groove and thrash metal approach currently sits at a much healthier, if not particularly desirable, 57%. It plays decently to me, but I'm far more of a thrash fan than I am a fan of groove or metalcore. This isn't a highly anticipated release for me, so it's actually better than I thought it would be.

As if to make a statement, the opener is an epic. It's Slaughter the Martyr and it opens with a long intro that's very much rock rather than metal, utterly unlike the Machine Head style. Eventually, it kicks in hard with swirling guitars and groove vocals, that raucous bellow that's half death growl and half metalcore shout. It's not my favourite style, but Flynn does it well and highlights just how versatile he is on this one. There's a point where he spits bars like he's almost rapping, the chorus shifts into power metal and the intro is all rock clean. He honest to goodness sings on this album, a choice that pays off in my book. The song is too long but, conversely, the longer it went, the less it seemed too long.

A strong opener leads into a couple more strong songs. Choke on the Ashes of Your Hate sounds as vehement as its title suggests, a powerful groove metal song. The guitars squeal, the vocals roar and the band are clearly very tight, even though half of them joined in 2019 and are appearing on a Machine Head album for the first time. Become the Firestorm follows suit, but with prominence given to the drums, which are fast and fond of fills. The bass rumbles too and the whole band is on fire. Halfway, it gets slow and djenty and Flynn almost tries for a Cronos-esque voice in a different genre. There's some neat melodic guitarwork from Wacław Kiełtyka and I loved the pace later as he delivers a more overt solo.

So far so good, but then we drift into a minute long dramatic scene, because this is supposed to be a concept album based around the Attack on Titan anime. Frankly, I hadn't noticed, because I was far more engrossed by Kiełtyka's lead guitar and, on that prior track, Matt Alston's drumming. It should be said that this album will succeed or fail on merits other than the concept. Maybe you'll gain something if you pay attention to the lyrics, but the album doesn't suffer if you don't do that. Well, beyond having to sit through three minute long dramatic scenes that feel out of place.

The real catch is that the album got away from me at this point. My Hands are Empty focuses much too strongly on a woah woah anthemic cheer which may work somewhat as a contrast to the song as a whole but it gets old quickly and feels artificial. The anger here is trendy metalcore anger, not the real thing which does, at least, return later. In the meantime, there are a bunch of songs that are just there. They're not bad songs per se but they're just more songs. In isolation—and I checked—they're loud and emphatic but, in the context of the album, they just fade into the background.

Things kicked back in for me late with the more overt thrash metal songs on the album. Maybe it's because Machine Head are only my third favourite Robb Flynn band after Forbidden and Violence, but Bloodshot feels more believably dangerous than anything else here. Rotten feels more thrash too but isn't up to the same standard. It seems that Machine Head fans aren't too fond of it, but I would call it out as my favourite song here, ahead of Choke on the Ashes of Your Hate, even if it's a long way from old school.

Arrows in Words from the Sky is an interesting closer with some heavy grinding sections and some soft clean singing sections too, but I think it's too little too late to prod me into upping my rating to a 7/10. I liked this more than I expected to, but it's still not really my thing. If it's yours, maybe it'll be a 7/10 for you. The bottom line is that it's far from Machine Head at their worst—even if I don't know Catharsis—but it's also far from Machine Head at their best.

Zeal & Ardor - Zeal & Ardor (2022)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Avant-Garde Black Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 11 Feb 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

The much celebrated Zeal & Ardor really shouldn't work as a concept. Manuel Gagneaux had been in a few different pop bands when he asked the members of 4chan to give him two genres for him to combine for a song he'd create in half an hour. They gave him black metal and black music, so he combined extreme metal with African American spirituals, a ludicrous concept but one that, to everyone's surprise, actually worked. Having found that he was somehow able to release this as a serious project, he framed the underpinning idea as "what if American slaves had embraced Satan instead of Jesus?"

While the first Zeal & Ardor album was an entirely solo effort, he expanded into a full band in time for the amazing second album Stranger Fruit, even though only the band's drummer, appeared on the album with him. That's Marco von Allmen and it's the two of them here as well, even though a lot of what they do is samples and programming. This is a much more artificial album than the last one and deliberately so, with plenty of electronic manipulation and a lot of industrial grooves too. I think that's a mistake because, while black metal can work with drum machines, I don't believe that spirituals can work with anything except heart and soul.

That's underlined for me on Bow, which explores the spiritual side of Zeal & Ardor but with heavily artificial accompaniment. These aren't old black felons singing on a chain gang. They're sitting in a studio generating handclaps electronically and that doesn't work for me in the slightest. Sure, I can see a place in music for the static, dissonance and manipulative effects that are spread over this album like a rash, but not in a solo spiritual section. Going with that decision means that Bow is a failed experiment for me and it's not the only one here.

Some songs work really well but I'm pretty sure that which will depend on your tastes. Many have praised Run, the opening single, which is a an alternative rock/nu metal onslaught, but I wouldn't because it didn't do much for me. I'd call out Golden Liar as the highlight, which reminded me of a Tracy Chapman song written for the soundtrack of a western feature, complete with whistles and narration. It's the sort of song that will absolutely find itself playing behind the crucial finalé of a TV show. There's some of that in Church Burns too, but it has industrial layers to hinder that.

Another track that worked for me is I Caught You, which combines the call and response aspect of spirituals with alt rock. It's modern and trendy and wants to be both, but it transcends the limits that come with that to be a fascinating song. Death to the Holy does some of the same, but with a little less ambition, something that's otherwise all over this album and every Zeal & Ardor release.

I have every respect for Gagneaux doing things that aren't done just to see if they'll work and I'm often appreciative of a song, even if I don't actually like it. Erase is one of those. I didn't want it to heavy up, but it does with hardcore vocals and jagged guitars that end up dissonant and djenty. I didn't like it much at all but it was easy to appreciate Gagneaux's talent nonetheless.

Where he lost me this time out was on songs that feel disjointed. Emersion is the first of them. It shifts genre like a round of Whose Line is It Anyway, alternating between inoffensive electronica in a Moby or Enigma vein and what I guess is blackgaze, the black metal wall of sound with what I would think of as a post-rock melody. These aren't integrated into a single sound, something that Hold Your Head Low achieves. It's like moving the dial on the radio between stations and back. It even ends with still more inoffensive keyboard work that could be the theme tune to a kids show. Feed the Machine feels disjointed to me too.

And all this means a mixed bag. I adored Stranger Fruit and don't recall any of it not working. This has a bunch of stuff that works, led by Golden Liar, and a bunch of stuff that doesn't, chief among them Emersion. Most of it sits in between, with Hold Your Head Low and I Caught You high on that scale but Bow and Feed the Machine at the lower end. And that means only a 6/10 for me, a major drop from the previous album. But hey, let's see what Gagneaux does next. It's guaranteed to be interesting but, when you're playing with genres like this, not everything pans out every time.

Bloodywood - Rakshak (2022)

Country: India
Style: Nu/Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Feb 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

Bloodywood have built quite a name for themselves over the past six years, given that this album is their debut of original music, following a 2017 collection called Anti-Pop 1, which was comprised entirely of metal covers of pop songs from artists like Rick Astley, Taylor Swift and the Backstreet Boys. To be fair, they deserve the attention because they've created a unique sound and there are precious few bands who can honestly claim that in 2022. They call themselves folk metal, which is a fair statement, given how much bhangra there is in their sound, but they're utterly unlike any folk metal band you can name.

Much of that is because they're incredibly commercial, which makes it a real shock to realise that this album wass independently released through Bandcamp. How are they not signed to a major label? The nu metal is obvious, furious and frantic beats and crunchy monotone guitars building most of these songs and the vocals split between folk, rap and clean rock voices. The Indian folk side is obvious too, not only in some of the vocals but in the jangly bhangra dhol drums and other more traditional sounds. However, this is highly versatile for nu metal, because Bloodywood venture often into what I think of as soundtrack territory, whether that be films or games. There's as much Machinae Supremacy in here as Linkin Park or Rage Against the Machine.

And, as much as I tend to despise nu metal, not for its use of rap but for its downtuned monotones, childish emo anger and its lack of instrumental solos, I rather like this new serious Bloodywood. It may be Jayant Bhadula's rapid fire vocals that sell the nu metal album the most, but the contrast with the folk side is a huge part of it too. Bhadula is decent at regular speed but when he ups the urgency, his delivery is amazing, clean but raspy and very very fast indeed. Raoul Kerr is a strong rapper and he works well with Bhadula but it's the clean vocals that impress me most.

Well, the contrast impresses me even more. Nu metal is fundamentally angry, at least whenever it's heavier than Limp Bizkit, and contrasting it with traditional Punjabi flutes and jangly bhangra dhol drums is a bizarre concept, but one that works. Indian folk music is inherently happy, so much so that bhangra bands, as the more commercial modern version, are frequent arbiters of mood at weddings. It's hard not to dance to it, even if you can't dance, and it's hard not to be reinvigorated by it, even if you started the day in a bad mood.

The best songs here, like Gaddaar and Machi Bhasad, feature a heavy dose of Indian music so the in your face anger of the guitar and vocals is tempered by folk elements and the result is at once happy and loud. The way that the band play with dynamics is perhaps best shown on Yaad, with an array of softer, piano driven moments, with alternating clean and rapped vocals, but also heavier and angrier sections. Bsdk.Exe features sections with choral backdrops, hand drums, hints at the crunchy metal guitars that will come and a variety of lead vocals over the top. It's not just a pair of unlikely genres combined for effect. Both those genres are properly combined and added to.

The atmospheric side works really well for me too. While Karan Katiyar provides the crunch of the guitars, he also contributes an impressive amount of flute. If I hadn't reviewed the latest Jethro Tull album in January, I'd suggest that this is the most flute I've heard on a rock album in forever. Maybe I should just say metal album there. It isn't just during the intros either, like on Aaj or Jee Veerey. The former feels like it was lifted from a sword and sorcery soundtrack before the frantic beat kicks in and we're suddenly in a video game. The early sections of Zanjeero Se do much of the same thing, piano and underlying electronica reminding of movies and games.

Bloodywood may have got our attention with singles like Ari Ari, which I couldn't avoid on YouTube when it was released, but it wasn't just a gimmick. They backed up the crazy idea behind the song with infectious style and solid musical chops. The only metal band I can think of who got a deeper level of crossover exposure to and appreciation from friends of mine who don't like metal are the Hu. That's impressive. And so is this album. Not everything nails the balance that they do so well, but the majority does and I'm eager to hear their next album.

Skillet - Dominion (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 14 Jan 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I worry every time I see a name like Skillet showing up with a new album. My mission is to listen to new music from across the rock and metal genres and around the world and, while it often makes me cringe, sometimes that means an American band who have been associated with nu metal at some point in the past, and I really don't wanna. I can dismiss a lot of it because I see nu metal as loud pop music more often than it's rock music and covering it can lead to predominantly negative review like Papa Roach's Who Do You Trust? There's too much good music out there for me to take time to review crap unless I'm warning as a public service.

But I've been surprised too. I've enjoyed some albums that I never thought I would or much more than I thought I would. The most obvious example is last year's excellent Chevelle album, which I have to admit to being completely shocked by, as it was utterly not what I expected, but I liked the Foo Fighters album last year and the Powerman 5000 a year earlier. This one turns out to be much better than the Papa Roach, but it's nowhere near the Chevelle. What's important is that it isn't objectively bad, it's just not my thing. If it's yours, then it's done well. Skillet know precisely what they're doing.

It opens with Surviving the Game, a catchy song that features aggressive guitars and chorus, but tempers that with some electronic tampering for effect, so it somehow ends up both aggressive and cute. This is the sort of song my kids were listening to when they were young teenagers, that almost had to end up as WWE entrance music, so Skillet have presumably stayed a little closer to the nineties than some of their peers. Then again, there's a clear use of autotune on the second song, Standing on the Storm, and that's more of a noughties thing, even if it came out only a year after Skillet were founded, in 1997. That's disappointing.

Much of what follows walks that awkward border between pop music and heavy music, with rock a kind of afterthought. The backdrop is almost always electronic or electronically enhanced and the melodies could easily be transferred to a pop song. However, there's a nu metal crunch on many of the songs and there are cool guitar solos here and there. Dominion is a great example of all those things at once and Surviving the Game features a lot of them. These songs half annoy me with the manipulations that seem unnecessary and half impress me because the band really knows how to shift. Dominion, for instance, reaches a drive that's comparable to the Sisters of Mercy, though it is not a cover of their song of the same name. It has a strong solo from Seth Morrison too.

Now, that may be the heaviest thing here and it's easily my favourite song on the album, but they work surprisingly well in a much softer mode, like on Refuge and especially Valley of Death, which isn't as annoying a power ballad as it feels like it ought to be. Skillet also occasionally shift into an alternative rock mode, toning down the nu metal crunch and getting all bouncy with clean vocals. The epitome of this is Shout Your Freedom, again not my thing but capably done nonetheless. It's fair to say that sentiment underlines the whole album for me. I don't like this, but I'm not going to tell you it's worthless because it isn't. I wouldn't turn the dial if anything on this album showed up on the radio and, depending on the song, I might well find my toes tapping along.

I'd even go so far as to suggest that it's a neatly varied album, none of these songs retreading the ground that others had already staked out. There's quite the range between songs like Dominion, Valley of Death and Shout Your Freedom, and others do interesting and unusual things, such as an experimental wild guitar sound on Destroyer and an African hum (and Celtic backing vocal) within Forever or the End that had me honestly smiling. I'd shut this album off more than once as I tried to figure out if I should review it, but I kept putting it back on and, by this late point on the album, I wondered if a band like Skillet were actually going to win me over. And, even though I don't see myself playing this again, they kind of did and that surprised me.

Within Temptation - Shed My Skin (2021)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 5/10
Release Date: 25 Jun 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Pinterest | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I was surprised by how much I liked Within Temptation's most recent album, Resist. I know the band as a symphonic gothic metal outfit, but there wasn't much of that on offer in 2019 with songs owing a lot more to modern western pop music, merely with a heavier, more bombastic industrial beat behind it. I would say that this EP continues that musical shift but the songs aren't as interesting as highlights on that album like Endless War or Holy Ground. There's less dynamic play on offer, Sharon den Adel is less adventurous and the songs just feel more sedate. The best thing about it is the cover art.

Shed My Skin is the best of the three songs here, the other two being the band's previous two singles, The Purge and Entertain You. Shed My Skin is lively and driven by its vocals and a Paradise Lost-esque shift in its chorus. As the cover suggests, this song is a collaboration with the German metalcore band Annisokay, but it's not that metalcore in its sound. The industrial beat from Resist is still here but the drums are cleaner, almost serving as the lead instrument. The others are a little buried, except for a resonant metalcore section early in the second half that's actually pretty cool.

I'm far less fond of the other two songs, though Entertain You has its moments. It has a more stripped down and bass heavy sound when it starts, but it drops into a pop song in the diva style. Googling the song to find out that the male voice belongs to Daniel Gibson, I stumbled on an astute comment about den Adel needing to pull a Gwen Stefani and go full on pop diva. I can see that option and this is a song that sits firmly in between that and the symphonic metal that the band used to play.

What I like about Entertain You is even more applicable to Shed My Skin and what I don't like about it is even more applicable to The Purge. With the exception of the admirably clean drums and the poppy vocals, which feature that Irish lilt I noted on Resist a couple of years ago, it feels like everything else is blended into just a tone. It doesn't matter what any of the other instruments are doing and they're doing nothing more than a set of sustained notes on the keyboards would provide.

These three songs are pretty short, running only about a dozen minutes, so the band padded out the running time to EP length by adding instrumental versions of the songs. That's an odd move because, without the vocals, there's not a lot here. I find myself listening to a lot of instrumental albums lately with a set of drawn out twelve minute jams, but the twelve minutes here feel drawn out to double that because there's very little to hold our interest.

I'd give Shed My Skin a 6/10 on its own because it's enjoyable enough, even if it isn't up to the standard of Resist. However, the other tracks aren't up to the standard and the instrumentals drag it all down, so I'll have to drop to a 5/10 for the EP as a whole. That's quite the drop from a highly recommended 8 for Resist only two years ago. Hopefully the next album will be more interesting.

Grande Fox - Empty Nest (2021)

Country: Greece
Style: Stoner/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Feb 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

Next up in my exploration of the apparently thriving rock/metal scene in Greece is Grande Fox, whose Bandcamp page says they play "space psychedelic stoner heavy rock". That's fair but maybe a little bit misleading, as there's another element missing from that description and there's nothing to hint at a very American sound. Sure, stoner rock came from the U.S. but, whenever I see both "psychedelic" and "space" in a genre, I think Hawkwind and they're not where Grande Fox tend to go, except perhaps on Brainstorm.

The heart of their sound is hard rock with enough fuzz on the guitar and enough of a psychedelic edge to count as stoner rock. There are southern rock tinges here too, most obviously on Hangman, and an alternate Nick Cave-esque groove early in Route 99. However, that missing element is highlighted by a prominent bass and clean but angsty vocals and that's nu metal, especially when a second voice adds to the depth of Rottenness of Youth and raises System of a Down along with more expected bands.

Nikos Berzamanis is the lead vocalist here and it's obvious that he listens to a lot of trendy American bands, not just because of his general vocal style but because of the way in which he crafts melodies and fills space. There's clearly plenty of pop, rap and punk in his voice, but somehow he fits in a hard/stoner rock outfit and fits surprisingly well. He's easily the most nu metal aspect in this band but I'm happy to say that he sounds good here, doesn't piss me off in the slightest and makes me appreciate just how versatile he can be. He's never trying to be someone specific; he's always experimenting with what might make a song sound different and that's never a bad thing.

Given how much music I cover from Europe and South America and other countries outside the U.S., it can't come as much of a surprise to find that I'm one of those old school fans who regards nu metal as more of a loud American pop genre than a progression of rock music down a particular track. I'm not a fan, generally speaking, though there are bands I appreciate. I like System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine as much as I don't like Korn and Limp Bizkit. If that's me just appreciating originality, it shouldn't surprise that I kind of like Grande Fox even when I don't.

And not everything here is for me, Overdose probably being the most obvious song I don't like, but it still features elements I do, like that neat Sabbath-esque riff that kicks it into motion. It's safe to say that more songs are absolutely for me. I particularly like the opener, Backstab, with its late drift into psychedelia; the space rock freakout, Brainstorm; and the genre hopping trip that is Brutal Colors. It isn't the only song here to find a funky vibe, regardless of whatever else it's doing.

This is a second full length studio album from Grande Fox, following Space Nest in 2016 and an EP in 2018 called Kulning. I liked a lot of this and I appreciated all of it and it's a particularly great example of how much musical invention is coming out of Greece nowadays. This is a more versatile album than other American-influenced releases I've reviewed by bands like Skybinder, Soundtruck and Dendrites, but it underlines once more a surprising trend for Greek bands to take their influences not from the rest of Europe but from across the pond in the U.S.

In This Moment - Mother (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Industrial Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Mar 2020
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Yeah, I have trouble with nu metal, but In This Moment have impressed me on a number of occasions, including on stage, and this album is as imaginative as nu metal tends to never be. It's a heck of a lot of different things at once, which combine to make it an impossible album to ignore. It features all the many things I hate about nu metal, but it does so within a heavily varied framework that constantly engages and has a real identity to it. If it's nu metal, it's not just nu metal and that makes a big difference.

That said, it's full of moments that make me say, "Hmm." For a start, it all begins with an interlude. Now, how can you begin anything with an interlude? Isn't the point of an interlude to be between other things? Here, the first song is between two interludes, which just seems bizarre. What's more, that first song is a cover version, of something as deeply uncool as Fly Like an Eagle, the old Steve Miller Band song, done as industrial rock. I shouldn't like this, but I do. It's very catchy.

It's the first of three covers on offer here, the other two being Queen's We Will Rock You, the original of which is so iconic that any attempt to cover it should be seen with suspicion, and Into Dust, originally by the decidedly not metal Mazzy Star, but which is a real highlight here. Those are all really odd choices, though I should add that there is forty further minutes of original material here, so this band isn't skimping on content.

These choices ask many questions, not least "Why?" We Will Rock You features Lzzy Hale and Taylor Momsen as guests and it's actually not bad at all, but it's as pointless as Britney Spears redoing I Love Rock 'n' Roll. It's been done. Move on. The question that wouldn't leave me alone, though, has to do with what genre In This Moment are nowadays. A lot of this is loud pop music but there's a frequent industrial focus too and there's far more of both of those than there is of heavy metal, even in the modern American sense.

The In-Between certainly plays up the industrial angle, as a heavy effect-laden single. It also features a lot of shouty vocals, so melodic metalcore with industrial pop sensibilities? It's actually quite catchy, for something so inherently artificial because of all the layers and effects. Legacy is a really catchy song too, an industrial pop song with dancing keyboards that sound like they were lifted from Dark Side of the Moon. There's much dynamic work in the later songs, like God is She, Holy Man and Into Dust.

This is the seventh album for In This Moment and they feel very comfortable here in a skin they've created for themselves. It's oddly balanced and I'm not sure how this works, because there are two contradictory approaches in play at once. Brink has a real power to her voice and her contribution is a raucous emotional outburst, which ought to be spontaneous and unadorned but is precisely controlled and heavily adjusted in the studio. Her voice is as rough as polished gets.

The band follow suit, with vicious industrial riffs that are intensely edgy and dangerous but are really produced with intense care. It feels like they want to be the dirty and rough machines that create in our factories but, at the same time, the carefully packaged product that's the end result of that industrial process. And, as much as it shouldn't work, it mostly does, even for someone like me who is far from the logical audience.

Lacuna Coil - Black Anima (2019)

Country: Italy
Style: Alternative
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2019
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My son kindly took me to a Lacuna Coil gig here a few years ago and, while I enjoyed myself, it was telling that the band didn't play either of the songs I was really hoping to hear, My Wings and To Myself I Turned, both from the band's 1999 debut, In a Reverie. It would seem that songs like these simply didn't have any place in the setlist of a band that had moved far from their gothic metal roots.

This album emphasises that change, though I think it's heavier than the last couple of albums. I remember when Evanescence made it huge with Bring Me to Life but those in the know pointed out that they were just a trendy Lacuna Coil. Nowadays, it feels like Lacuna Coil are taking their influences from the bands that they had previously influenced, and that's a strange scenario to find myself in as an old fan of the band.

Sometimes it works really well. Layers of Time is almost extreme, certainly as heavy as this album gets, with intriguing melodies laid over a prominent bass and unusual drum rhythms. The contrast between the heavier general tone and some delicate vocals from Cristina Scabbia is very tasty indeed.

However, much of the rest sounds carefully produced to be just as extreme as the current state of music will allow without losing a mainstream audience. Tracks like Apocalypse, Under the Surface and The End is All I Can See are crafted cleverly but far too much, so that they hint sneakily at industrial influences while really being loud pop songs, perhaps the best definition of nu metal, which this is far too often. The latter could easily be a Depeche Mode song if it just quietened down a bit.

Unfortunately, I spent much of the album alternating between being impressed and being disappointed. Now or Never begins with a delightfully quirky intro but then it veers away into utterly routine nu metal, a slow melody playing over the top doing little to bring us back. It does get interesting again at the midpoint with Scabbia getting all shouty but in a punk way rather than a hardcore way, but it's too little too late. I was into it, but then I wasn't and then I was but then I wasn't.

The closest we get to old school Lacuna Coil is Veneficium, which kicks off with a choral chant and continues with cleaner male vocals. Black Anima, the title track that closes out the album, has its moments too, another of those slow melodies tinkling over the raucous backdrop. However, I wouldn't really call these highlight tracks, just more enjoyable ones for an old school fan.

And, really, that's the biggest factor in play here for me. Over a couple of decades, Lacuna Coil have moved from being slap bang in the middle of what I liked most all the way to where they're hovering outside what I like at all. They're a talented bunch of musicians and I'm happy that they're doing what they love, but it just isn't for me any more. This is far from gothic metal, being more like a third alternative and two thirds nu metal perhaps.

I wish them well but I suddenly feel old. Get off my lawn, you kids!