Gunmetal Grey "Solitude" CD
[Indianola]
Here's another in a long line of melodic Swedish styled metalcore bands from American soil. It's not as generic as most of these bands and the writing is stronger than average, but it's still somewhat tired and needs work to reach its full potential. What I like about it is that they break out some wicked melodic solos that are very well composed and add a lot to the songs, as well as writing linear compositions that take a handful of riffs and build around variations rather than throwing in a million changes all over the place. Beyond that they focus on solid dual guitar harmonies and thrashy picking patterns rather than stale tremolo picking bullshit, and they toss in a dash of lush clean guitars for added texture as well. Like many of the more popular bands of this general nature there's an even blend of harsh screaming and singing on this thing, and despite lacking a little emphasis the singing's actually pretty damn good, so if the dude would go all out and toss in more prominent vocal harmonies they'd be set in that department. The title track is much more rocked out and has some riffs reminiscent of Carcass' final days alongside more pronounced singing that kind of has a weird grungy thing going on (which is ironically not so bad), and that's kind of a cool shift. They close the disc with the 5,000,000th cover of the Cro-Mags' "Life of My Own" (incorrectly called "Life on My Own" here), which came as a shock simply because none of their original material is even remotely close to the Cro-Mags. But I can't complain... the Cro-Mags are one of my favorite bands of all time, not to mention one of the greatest bands ever, period, so you simply can't lose there. Production-wise something about the rhythm tone sounds unnatural to me and lacks the character that it needs to carry the heaviness of some of these riffs. There's also not much of a bass presence in there either, so there's a big gap in the center of the mix where the drums hold down most of the low-end and the guitars and vocals are a little separated elsewhere. The solos sound fucking sweet though, with a nice warm tone and all that jazz. Make no mistake, it sounds pretty damn good, but it needs something more to really represent these songs to their full potential. The layout? I don't get it. The artwork is silly and ugly and doesn't fit the music at all. The text is nice and clean and the band photos are fine, but the artwork itself is really boring. Lyrically I'm not drawn to anything, it's all personal stuff that's chock full of all that overdramatic junk, as in, "The taste left dry upon my tongue, Your warm embrace eases me numb, Your cold shoulder makes me fear, Your vision stares at me clear..." No thanks. I'd more than likely be willing to go ahead and grant these guys a 7/10 if the recording was a little beefier and if one or two more songs were a bit more energetic. They write consistently good songs and I'm loving the solos, but the lyrics are boring and the layout is weak. In addition to those elements the band is still just a smidge underdeveloped right now, but if they keep at it they could be among the more known bands out there within a couple of years. Not bad, it just needs that extra push. (6/10)
Running time - 24:49, Tracks: 7
[Notable tracks: Dreaming, Solitude, Life of My Own]
Indianola Records - http://www.indianolarecords.com

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