dan's jams - music reviews

This is a 6 person band. Two guitars, bass, drums, a female vocal and a male vocal. In their early days, they were called "beauty and the beast" vocals, because Cristina Scabbia's clean and beautiful vocals were offset by the growls and screams of Andrea Ferro. It was a neat effect and was a part of their sound. Well, it's not there anymore. Oh he's in the band, at least, according to these liner notes, and I guess that's him buried deep in the mix SINGING on a few of these songs, but I miss the yells and screams. Ah well.

Karmacode is now their 5th release (if you include the EP, which I do) and the first with the weight of global expectations weighing down on them. Who would have thought this little european band that could actually would? Comalies was a great album (that broke them internationally), and Unleashed Memories before it was too (that sold 16 copies and I bought 2 of them because I broke the first accidentally, though I'm sure by now those numbers have shot up quite a bit), but how were they going to react now with so much attention? Well they stayed on european metal mainstay Century Media records, whom they've been with since their inception. They re-hired Waldemar Sorychta (Grip Inc.) to produce, who has produced every single one of their releases and engineered most of them, too.

If it ain't broke, you know?

And it still isn't. They exploit a lot of harmonic minor key structure, the guitars are distorted and the drums are simple, the vocals exquisite (damn she's good, in my opinion most likely the bet female singer in the genre) - it's getting kinda hard to call this metal anymore, maybe it wasn't ever, but it was kind of underground at one point, so that made it easier. Really, this is like gothic hard rock with a little pop jammed into a few nooks and crannies and stretched over a chorus or two. Oh, every once in a while they dirty it up: the intro of "What I See" drops in with a crunchy down tuned riff and a Korny hihat offbeat. But "Within Me" starts with an acoustic guitar and graduates to a bridge and chorus with full-on tear-jerky strings. In fact there are other places where I hear a little korn debt going on - the pedal chords of the pre-chorus of "Fragments of Faith" - the chromatic riffing of the start of "Our Truth". It's not a bad thing, and it's not overt or a rip-off, but it's there.

Overall, it develops on some of the successes of Comalies, adds a touch more pop sensibility, and then skews that back to center with a few full out crunchy numbers. And the cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" is pretty cool too.