Now that we got that depressed music out of the mind of your favorite reviewer, let's kick it into overdrive!
Today's second review is the band In Chaos Forged's EP titled In Chaos Forged. The band is a one man affair, with everything being played, sung, written, and handled by Scott Lawson, the former guitarist of the band The Ziggurat. ICF is a Melodic/Death/Thrash band, which means it's right up in my alley of preferred listening. I'm not quite sure when the EP was released/uploaded (there's no date mentioned on the band's ReverBNation profile.
The track listing for the album is as follows:
1. Rise of the Sentinels
2. F.U.B.A.R
3. Self Sabotage Syndrome
4. To Live, To Suffer, To Learn
5. Misery Freak
The quality of sound for the whole EP is very well, and is almost pro quality. You can easily tell that time went into producing, mixing, and all of the good things in between to make the album come out sounding good.
Each instrument, is clearly audible, and is tightly held together and streamlined, making the listen easy to in one go if one desires to do so. While everything does sound to the typical format of Death and Thrash Metal, it brings a couple of things new to the style. These though are mostly in how some songs sound. There's a few nods throughout certain guitar solos and riffs that kind of shout out to other genres like power metal, hard rock, Depressive/Gothic Metal, Metalcore, and even Nu Metal. So while it does sound the same, it has that slight difference to it.
The drumming for the majority of the tracks, stays on beat all the time, providing a good back beat and rhythym for the EP. And the drumming is quite exceptional to in how it's used and sounds. As like the guitars, it sounds like typical old Death, but it gets the job and point across of "Hey we Death Thrash and we gunna fuck up your ears for a little bit!"
The vocals are clearly there and heard. All of the singing is done in the style of Death Growling, with a few spoke verse parts thrown in every now and then. At times, it sounds a little weak, and that Mister Lawson is having to try harder to keep them going. In one song, the melodic singing comes out, and it sounds almost like System of A Down to a degree. But all in all, they sound very nice.
As for the songs themselves, they are all great in my humble opinion. I was able to listen to the entirety of the release without wanting to pause, take a break, or get bored. All have a very catchy sound to them, and this mostly stems form the guitar work. I can easily see myself listening to this at any point when I need a good quick injection of Metal, and don't want to pick out a CD.
Each song is fairly different as well. You get songs with vocals, songs without vocals, ambient sounding songs, and pure Slayer sounding ones. It has a great variety to it, and makes each listen enjoyable as it never gets old or repetitive.
As far as cons for the album go, there are a few. As I stated earlier, the vocals at times sound as if they're fading and getting weaker, which I would imagine is due to the strain of having to growl your way throughout the entire recording process. And when it comes to the soft melodic singing in To Live, To Suffer, To Learn, it doesn't sound like the pro quality of the other songs, and feels like it was done at home and just thrown in at random. And while the bass can be heard to a degree, it's presence would be enjoyed more, as I feel that if it was louder and clearly heard, it would give the album a good bit more of a backbone and rough sound to it.
But those are were the cons end in my opinion. The album is great beginning to end. I'll leave a link at the end of the review so that you can all go and give it a listen. It's kind of funny, I'm finding my favorite releases of the eyar to be these obscure and indy metal ones.
In Chaos Forged is a great debut EP, from a great band. It gets the Poe Ohlin blood smear of approval.
A -
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