dan's jams - music reviews

Another four years and another line-up change, this time the singer from "Strength in Numbers" is gone and Jimi Hazel has stepped into the guitarist/lead vocalist position. Jimi isn't the vocalist that either of his predecessors were at the front of the band, but their style doesn't suffer much for this, and they go for broke with a 17 track album.

No longer on a major label, Jimi and crew return back to a diversely styled collection of songs, collectively not as hard as some of what they've done, but with a few pummeling parts in "Yeah X 3" and "Clique". This album instead takes the 24-7 Spyz sound further into funk/groove territory, from the nearly 70's styled strings and lazy funk of "Let Your Fancy Flow" to the more modern and percussive groove of the single "If I Could" to the completely metal-less R&B emotion of "Crushonya". I've always felt like 24-7 Spyz was at their best when they were fusing the groove to flat-out metal riffage, but this album seems to have far less of the metal that I've come to love from them, and while none of it is bad, none of it stands out terribly much either.