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Review |
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There’s something strangely familiar about
metal music. It’s like going home to your
parent’s house for Christmas and smelling
those all too familiar smells of the festive dinner.
Or the noise emanating from a whisky influenced
living room full of your grandparents. You just
know what to expect. Just like metal, as soon as
you hear it, you know what it is.
However this statement can, like most things,
evoke two feelings. It can be a confirmation of
some truly fantastic music that shakes you to
the core. Or it could be a repetitive noise which
sludge’s together tracks to create an album
where you cannot tell which songs start and end.
The Saviour’s latest album- ‘Accelerated
Living’ slots into both of these polar opposites.
Saviours are an Oakland based quartet. Oakland
being part of the Bay Area, that little corner
of the American dream which gave birth to a rather
substantial portion of the music we know and love
today. Be it from 60s legends The Grateful Dead
to 80’s pioneers of thrash Metallica, this
area has a lot of history under its wing. It’s
with little surprise then to hear the similarities
between Saviours and their peers.
Music is now evolving into millions of sub genres,
yet this latest outing is an apple that hasn’t
fallen very far from the tree. That’s not
a bad thing however; Title track ‘Acid Hand’
ploughs us headlong back into the world of classic
thrash with a thudding drumbeat and chugging guitars
throughout. Second track ‘We Roam’
builds on the foundations further with more evolved
fret work and a definitive classic metal sound.
Succeeding tracks then continue the classic thrash
them throughout the album. Latter tracks lean
towards Saviours’ back catalogue with a
more stoner/sludge metal tone emerging. Particularly
during track ‘The Rope Of Carnal Knowledge’.
A brilliant guitar lead complemented by precise
and uniformed drumming makes for a brief respite
from the solid wall of thrash that lies now behind
us at this point in the album.
Unfortunately, ‘Accelerated Living’
does seem to get caught out by thrash albums only
enemy - It does seem to become a little repetitive
after some time. The very similar pacing of the
album didn’t really allow for many particular
standout moments throughout the record. Don’t
get me wrong, it’s not bad music at all.
It’s fast, hard, and classic. But disappointingly
it just seems to blur together all too often.
Austin Barber’s (vocals) also seems to have
been overshadowed in the album. His vocals, clearly
strong through its consistency and performance
on previous albums, seem to be slightly muted
on this particular record. Be it more of an issue
of production, I couldn’t help but feel
that the vocals needed to have been further enhanced
with a more concise and prominent sound.
All in all it’s an album laden with reference
and inspiration of years gone by. The pedigree
of the Bay Area thrives throughout the record,
and it’s a certainly a home grown act. It
doesn’t do anything wrong per se, but it’s
not exactly breaking any moulds either. If you
need a revolution of thrash metal in your life,
and then maybe this isn’t the right stop
to get off at. But if you want some solid music
which has been home grown from the 80’s
legends, then this is just the record you’ll
need in your collection.
3/5
Review by Phil Davies |
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| Band
Members |
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Austin Barber
Sonny Reinhardt
Cyrus Comiskey
Scott Batiste |
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| Track
Listing |
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1. Acid Rain
2. We Roam
3. F.G.T
4. Livin' In The Void
5. Burnin' Cross
6. Slave To The Hex
7. The Rope Of Carnal Knowledge
8. Apocalypse World Split
9. Eternal High |
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| Band
Related Links |
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| Review
Score Code |
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- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
-
What Was That? |
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