Cold War "From Russia With Love..." CD
[Indecision]
This is the debut full-length from this Californian metalcore act featuring members who've been involved with Welcome to Your Life, Throwdown, Scars of Tomorrow, and Atreyu, but despite the fact that their style is dominated by the ever popular melodic Swedish death metal style, I have to say this is above average work. They've got just the right blend of dual guitar harmonies, effective tremolo picking, chugging mosh parts, dissonant or acerbic rhythms, screaming vocals, etc. The songs run around four to five minutes each, which is a bit long for what they offer, but thankfully the writing keeps things streamlined rather than throwing in 100 different riffs and jumping all over the place. And, while nothing new, their Swedish runs are very tactful, with some of the moshier material getting pretty fuckin' intense. While not my favorite track, I do really like some of the atypical chord phrasings in "Fuck the Game", and some of the melodic riffing is actually kind of interesting during the chorus (this is also among the more effective tracks that employs samples at times); while "Bombs Away" has some noisier chords and faster tempos that stand out from the other songs. Oddly enough some of the more generic tracks are the most memorable, such as "What You Deserve", which adds brief singing vocals and intense layers of melodic guitar parts to a tried and true backbone of equal parts pure chugga breakdown and straight Swedish harmonies. "Retrace My Steps" takes a chunkier 90's metalcore sort of direction with meaty power chords and minimal melodic tinges for a consistent pummeling, and closer "One Chance" opens with sinister samples and clean guitars before following a similar road of midpaced burliness that throws in a little more of the metal stuff for added variety. At the end of the disc is an unlisted cover of Iron Maiden's "The Trooper", and aside from the fact that the gang vocals on the "whoa ohhh" stuff are way too overbearing their rendition is surprisingly awesome, so... credit due on that one. The recording's solid, too. The bass tone is really dense and plays a large role thickening up the center of the mix, the drummer hits hard as shit, the vocals rest right alongside the guitars, and the guitars use a nicely crunchy distortion that works great for the palm-muted rhythms as well as the dirtier metal riffs and whatnot. Sometimes the drumming feels a little rushed and off time, and there's room for tweaking the textures for a little more efficiency, but for the most part I'm really digging the production. The layout's kind of a mixed bag of communist propaganda styled imagery and photos of soldiers, gas masks, barbed wire, etc. Parts look really nice, others aren't doing much for me. My biggest complaint is that, while it looks cool, that whole artsy Russian lettering looking font is kind of generic and definitely makes the lyrics a pain in the ass to read. I'm not blown away by the lyrics anyway, but lines like, "This time I trust no one, Alone I feed on desire, desire to destroy, Let me feed on desire, Destination destruction..." kind of give you an idea of what to expect, generally speaking. Overall this is definitely not the most creative band out there, but considering that this general niche is very overpopulated, I do indeed consider this to be a brighter spot over most of the bands that I hear of this nature. I'm not blown away by any means, but there's more enjoyable work on this disc than you'll get from a lot of their contemporaries. (7/10)
Running time - 48:00 (approximately), Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: What You Deserve, Retrace My Steps, One Chance]
Indecision Records - http://www.indecisionrecords.com

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