Deadlands : "SEVEN"

 

This New York duo, manages to come together like a whole ass band in the studio. With this comes some of the spillover that metal core has breathed in as it reaches its final form as the new birth of "nu-metal". The opening track is both in your face and hooky, so it works for me. "Die in Paradise" is more aggressive on the verses. It switches back and forth in a more predictable formula than the opening track. The chorus to this one is a little too happy for me. "More ! " works better off the pop energy, which has a harder punch for the chorus.  The hook sounds like every generic band doing this sort of thing. 

They start losing me on "Limbo" as they are doing this as well as Spirit Box, so it slowly grows harder to take it seriously, when they are busting out wanna be arena rocker. They obviously have to bring some Middle Eastern influence in for a song called "Kundalini," where the more Katy Perry-like elements do not bug me, and work better than when they try to beef up the metal in their metal core. I do like the rapped verse, they need more of that. 

Be it hair metal, grunge or nu-metal one things that I have watch from the front row kill all these genres of music is the diluting of the essence which each trip the next batch of bands that's on the band wagon, until it is so watered down it loses all the taste it once had, Going hard is not who they are as people which is why a song like "Wither" does not feel heavy no matter how many break down riffs they pile on. A minute into the song, and I am bored. "House of Cards" works better with its djenting blend of metal-cored out nu-metal. This is fun enough, and they have potential. I think it's going to take playing various stages with different kinds of acts for them to see where they stand in the big picture and learn how to write accordingly. I will give this album an 8 for what it is. 

pst230