Cost: 99¢
Make no mistake, this doesn't shy away from '90s groove metal trends, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of actual thrashing here in tracks like "Confined Ways" and "Sense of Balance," and the guitarwork and soloing seems to be of a much higher quality than your typical Pantera or Machine Head styled band (I suspect all of this is largely due to two of the members playing in more traditional '80s Cleveland metal bands). The band seems to be extremely fond of gang vocals, which often lends the music a strong crossover flavor and makes the groove stuff more palatable. The main vocals are a gruff style--not my favorite but they don't seem terribly forced. Someone else contributes lame yelling vocals, but thankfully they aren't used that much.
Up until about halfway through the disc I was thinking about this fairly positively, at least for the style. Then "Meant Not to Speak" suddenly throws in a section with jokey crooned Elvis parody vocals. I thought this was a one time gag, but then towards the end both "Turmoil" and "Something Different" have more silly clean warbles. Who ever thought that was a good idea? There's even an overly long unlisted throwaday track of the band playing a simple instrumental line underneath samples of jet engines and radio chatter, and they could have easily thrown the clean vocals in there if they had to be included at all.
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