Album Review: One-Way Mirror – Destructive By Nature

Hands up who likes cheese. We all like cheese, right? We have our favorites too, possibly a mature Cheddar, a gooey Brie, some holey Emmenthal or a few slices of burger-lovin’, good-old processed American. The stuff is so moreish it deserves its own food group.

When it comes to music though, if it’s cheesy there’s plenty of folks are gonna turn their noses up and walk away. Perhaps, it’s their die-hardened old school, true or cvlt moralistic standpoints, perhaps it’s the fact that cheesy music tends to come with a whole charade of gimmicks that puts them off (e.g.; bands that wear coordinated outfits or those that sell weird, often vaguely pornographic, merch), or perhaps they’ve been burned in the past by former musical loves turning bad on them. They may even have had a sense of humor bypass. Me, I love cheese and think it’s almost essential to have a couple of cheesy bands in your collection. Hell, stick on some lounge or some nu-metal and you’ll find me swinging from the nearest obscenely-ornate chandelier.

This, naturally, brings me to the enigma that is those crazy Frenchmen One-Way Mirror. Having previously reviewed the band’s eponymous debut, I thought I knew what was coming with their latest effort, but was a little shocked all the same. With Destructive By Nature, there’s still plenty of cheese on show here – even that sumptuous artwork looks like squeezy-cheese. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of the stuff; a pastiche of yellows, off-whites and blues; a cloud of faint aromas that suddenly burst into noxious whiffs. It’s heavier than before and they’ve most certainly expanded their overt range of production and post-production techniques. The whole focus here is on the incredible diversity of vocal styles booting you regularly in the ears ranging from single, double and treble-layered vocal, gang and crowd chants, obscured sections, electronically-tweaked gargles, fuzzed bits, bass-boosted parts, grunts, screams, cleans and scratched on/off versions. Trust me, if you had a one-way mirror you’d want to have it in their studio, so you could, without hurting the bands feelings, pull the kind of incredulous faces you will be pulling when you hear this. It’s along the lines of Figure Of Six getting chewed on by Threat Signal for doing a Mnemic impression.

Take the opening few bars of the album as an example. Put simply, they use it to introduce themselves. Literally. The kick-drum pads out the timing… “One!” (crowd roar) “Way!” (crowd roar) “Mirr-or!” (crowd roar). Cue big electronic sample and in bursts Rouxel’s full drumkit. Cheesier than a ball of edam. Oh, and they’ve got a press release to match – “This album is not unlike shrapnel as it will embed itself in your system upon explosion. Some songs will make the fans bang their heads while others will simply decimate them altogether”. A wonderfully ludicrous claim and, I’m sorry, but I beg to differ.

This all feels like a bit of a step backwards. I kept listening for the addictive qualities that tracks like “Destination Device”, “As You Are Now”, “Empty Spaces” or “Sockracer”, from their debut, had in spades. That “stand up and pump your fist” hook or the “sing your heart out” anthemic lyrics to kick in, but I kept coming up with shoulders shrugged and bottom lip protruding. The groove through tracks like “Face To Face” and “Straight Into The Wall” have a sinister underbelly but there’s just no firey contents inside whilst the stinging bitchslaps of “Soupracer” and “Deadly Shores” is all fire and no subtlety. It’s almost like, by creating reverberating highly-strung walls that dive into charred chugs and by boosting Perdicaro’s rumbling bass-drive, they’ve lost the ability to punch out kick-ass lines to go with it. The verses are virtually obliterated by theatrical posturing and there’s no simple-structured switch up from there, meaning that the choruses come and go without sticking in your noggin.

They do have a bit of a crack at mixing it up. The uber-heavy thrash that blisters the surface of “Wasted Years” is a welcome addition, there’s a memorably pained howl in the verse of “Inner Symphony” and there’s a couple of sweet soaring choruses in “Unexpected” and “Made In Vain”, where their softer side comes through. Sadly though there’s just too much overlap and too much filler here. It’s a shame as they suckered me in with their yummy debut, where the contrast between rough and smooth, hook and drive, was pretty much bang on. If you’re new to OWM then, remember, the whole thing takes some getting used to (and this certainly improves with age) but if there’s nothing that grabs you on that first spin, it’s unlikely you’ll return for another nibble.

Also online @ The NewReview =  http://thenewreview.net/reviews/one-way-mirror-destructive-by-nature

Album Review: Drawers - All Is One

The sheer volume of music out there, divided into a plethora of disparate genres and subgenres, never ceases to amaze me. As lovers of the art form we are all sweeping our musical metal detectors across these heaving, sonic haystacks, searching for the tiny needles in each that prick our attention. The idea, of course, is that we collect enough needles from enough haystacks to satiate our own desire. As we grab our needles to knit our own musical sweater, it’s so easy to forget the vast weight of bands we either fail to pick-up on, or do so and discard.

Drawers are a band who, amidst the trend for those one-word, pluralised bandnames and the resurgent craze for atmospherics and big riffs, are in danger of not getting picked up. It’s clear from, “All Is One”, their debut album about a sailor’s journey to meet his nemesis, that the band have sucked up many different flavours of sludge and stoner metal to produce a hard, smothering sound that’s heavy enough to suffocate.

They start aggressively with both “Capuut Mortem Ocean” and “Black Queen” ripped with the grumbling guitar tone of High On Fire and enamoured with a touch of the dark power of Purified In Blood. “Grey Sailor” piles some of Corrosion Of Conformity’s hardcore feistiness into the mix, dissecting the rhythmic groove into spasming sections. Mostly though, you’ll be hearing plenty of the low-keyed progressive fury of Crowbar and Down, especially in tracks like “Ivory Lighthouse”, “Red Ballet” and “Muddy Smoke”, both in the Anselmo meets Windstein vocal and the weight of dissonance, dissolving the chugs into a singular sound.

Tracks like the short-but-sweet “Blue Keel” and the more expansive “Silver Hand” dig down into cleaner waters adding another brief layer with a more pinched, proggy quality a la Baroness or Isis. “Silver Hand”, in particular, is a winner having retained the driven punch built up from previous tracks to offer a taste of both worlds. Another cracker is the raw power-play, “Golden Adieu”, which simply refuses to cede ground to allow you room to breathe.

With quite a few recognisable influences up front and centre, the task of projecting their own stamp on the project becomes increasingly more important as the tracks roll by. Sadly, by “Purple Ride” and “Electric Seat”, Drawers have succumbed to towing the stoner metal line, mimicking Down almost to the last detail in an attempt to suck up some of their signature, grime-slicked, deep Southern groove, wobbling along the same path, facetiously mimicking their bow-legged gait.

It’s odd that an album whose song-titles feature an array of colours should seem so undeviating, but it’s an album that undoubtedly has an enormous heft to it. It’s for this reason that, despite its lack of variety and tendency to copycat, fans of any of the aforementioned bands should get a kick out of this. For the rest of you, as it stands, if your detector gets one whiff of these Frenchmen right now, it will simply short-circuit and Drawers will find themselves sliding back down to the bottom of that haystack.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/02/drawers-all-is-one-slow-burn-records/

Album Review: TesseracT - One

This is an album that has been eight long years in the making. Right from that fateful day in 2003 when guitarist Acle Kahney began penning lyrics, for what was then a solo project, right up to the day that the fully-formed TesseracT handed over this hallowed piece of polycarbonate plastic, they have been building to this moment. It's been a long process of road-testing and fine-tuning their material through a multitude of live performances and recorded previews. Needless to say, along the way they have accrued a mighty fanbase, not forgetting a recent Golden Gods nomination, so that now there are many who will hail this album as the moment when the validity of a new music scene was finally accepted by all.

Djent - that odd-sounding word just keeps popping up. I suppose it's the kind of word you can really chew on. Although you could just as easily describe TesseracT as being math or tech metal, for some reason this more-refined description seems to fit them better. The onomatopoeic 'djent', originates of course from the sound of a heavily-distorted, palm-muted guitar strike and it is all over this album. You'll no doubt catch the influences they've picked up from their tours with Meshuggah and The Devin Townsend Project, but that's not to say that those high-gain, polyrhythmic cuffs dominate here like they do on so many of those particular bands' tracks. No, here it is used more as a lead-through to the more evocative side of TesseracT where they flood you with unerringly epic vocal (that, initially, sounds like it would be more at home fronting an alt-rock band), expansive melodics and wildly progressive key changes. These are moments that are more likely to make you feel like you're in an alien environment - similar to that ethereal music created by bands like No Made Sense, Mastodon or Isis.

The overlapping vocals that float in layers above the chiming guitars and funk-fuelled bass of 'April', the emotion-soaked verses of 'Sunrise' (the antithesis of the underscored hammering strings) and the skyscraping vocal that runs through 'Lament' before acquiescing to the shuddering pulse - these are the moments where we will wallow, allowing our minds to wander. The spatial polyrhythmic blasting of 'Deception', the hopelessly cantankerous 'Epiphany', Dan Tompkins' mesmerising vocal performance over the soaring melodics of "Eden" - these are going to be the rare moments when we focus and throw shapes.

If it is true of 'One' that we have already gorged ourselves on it's heart (The six tracks that comprise the 'Concealing Fate' saga were released last year), leaving us just five new tracks to mull over, then it is also true that hearing what surrounds the centre is like suddenly seeing the whole picture. Listen to that early release now and it will feel somewhat incomplete. So although this is essential listening, before you leap, consider this. It may be a generalisation, but the levels of production clarity on show can easily divide the potential listener into one of two factions. The tech-heads amongst you will get goosebumps, whilst the remainder will bemoan the absence of raw edge; the inorganic, procedural feel of the delivery. I'm afraid, on a personal level, this kind of pinpoint accuracy does make me a little nervous. It's the same feeling I get when I visit a hospital - metal-fronted lifts set into white walls and high heels click-clacking on spotless lino - impulsively, I want to scratch up the floors and throw mud at the machines. So while I'm on board to a point, I'm going to be a lot more likely to dig out the filthy majesty of Chimp Spanner or Of Legends to get my djent fix in the future. Consider yourself warned.

Also online @ MTUK = http://www.metalteamuk.net/apr11reviews/cdreviews-tesseract.htm

Review Archive: Loyal Trooper - One Day All This Will Work Out

Self-produced and self-released, Loyal Trooper (AKA Andy Walker) seems prepared to trudge methodically on in his attempt to break into the public consciousness through the back door. With MySpace and YouTube now available he’s got as good a chance as any.

‘Division Street Blues’ is this EP’s class act, drawing comparison with the likes of Frank Turner. It’s upbeat, angst-fuelled and cutting - It follows on from the pace set by the opener ‘Nottingham Wasn‘t Built For Me‘. When things begin to get dark, as on ’Five Year Plan’ the lyrics, along with the music, can get a bit too heavy and cloying - “Will they ever get bored of being self-important pricks“, he hisses.

‘Okay At Best’ picks things back up, with a little help from his friends, and backing vocals and extra instrumentation give it plenty of layers into which to delve. The guitars have a pleasant twang to them and the pistoning drums sit strongly in the mix. To finish with the gentile, stripped-down ‘M1 To The A52’ is inspired. If Andy Walker really is a trooper, then he’s got every chance of success.