Insense "s/t" CD
[Dark Reign]
Hmmm... the jury's still out on this Norwegian act. A part of me wanted to immediately say, "Okay, this is nu-metal." But that's not necessarily true. Are there elements of nu-metal here? You're damn straight. But detuned groove does not simply nu-metal make, and despite the fact that when all is said and done Insense does lean farther towards nu-metal than anything else, there are a lot of more extreme elements going on that remind me of "real" metal bands, or even metalcore to some degree. Most of the songs are based around rhythmic grooves with a little bit of a start/stop odd timed thing going on, and there are some more experimental guitar textures involved at times as well, but something about this is better than average. I don't know what it is. Take a little bit of Meshuggah, Bloodlet, Lamb of God, Alice in Chains, and some nu-metal and this is what you'll get. It's confusing, though. You've got "Trust Just a Few", a total nu-metal "ballad" complete with emphatic melodies, clean guitars mixed with distorted guitars, singing vocals, and all that stuff... And you've got "Thought Distillery", which is noticeably slower and drops some fucking great dual guitar harmonies (bordering on the mastery of Crowbar)... but even though these are actually damn good songs, they're still predictable and lacking originality. The production is pretty damn good. It's not super huge, but it's not far from it. The drums sound really full and forceful, the guitars are heavy but very clear, there's plenty of room for the bass to breathe, and the vocals are somewhere amidst it all. I don't have any real complaints at all. The layout's not bad. I like the dirty textures and the appearance of crumpled up paper that has been torn and stapled back together. I don't know what the hell the blue octopus tentacles are all about, though. I'd like it better if those weren't there, but what can you do? The lyrics are sort of cryptic and deal strictly with personal content, and even though I'm not totally into it, I think they're handling things better than a lot of bands. "Dull pain still wreaks havoc on my brain convenience is demise must think at level three to cope with all the nonsense that's slowly killing, what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger, once in life I'll blow the lid wide open cutthroat knife and all defenses down..." I guess this sort of sounds like something that could have been on Roadrunner before the label took another dive (this time into the Nickleback "rock" pool), but it's not so bad. If they'd keep explore their melodic side without so many tendencies towards what's popular I think they'd come up with something a lot more interesting. Right now I'd say the band believes themselves to be more "extreme" than they really are. (6/10)
Running time - 39:19, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Trust Just a Few, Thought Distillery]
Insense - http://www.insensehq.com

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