It seems wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen is quietly earning a name for Rock bands in recent years, with retro Psych trio The Sonic Dawn gaining a particularly favourable reputation. Eclipse (Heavy Psych Sounds) is the band’s third full-length release in four years and, despite being influenced by undisclosed personal tragedy, the sound is as bright as ever.Continue reading
After several decades it would be completely forgivable for any band to ease their foot on the peddle as it were, but then again Amorphis are no ordinary band. It is well documented how they weathered a substantial transition in style through the 90’s from death metal with the classic Tales From The Thousand Lakes (Relapse) into a much more melodic entity with Elegy (Relapse) two years later.Continue reading
After their self-titled, four-track EP back in 2016 comes the release of Eclipse (Marshall), the debut album from Devonshire three piece Reigning Days. Brooding riffs and big centerpiece choruses their style of rock is deeply rooted in Royal Blood, Biffy Clyro, and Queens of the Stone Age, and as such, they have been getting some love from the UK mainstream press.Continue reading
As the monolithic behemoth of a tour featuring Slipknot, Korn and King 810 strides across Europe at this moment, Cold Snap’s new album World War 3 (Eclipse) seems the perfect accompaniment. If you played this album to anyone in that crowd they would think, wow 2002 will indeed live forever.
Cold Snap is an amalgamation of everyone who seemed to be big at the time of the Japan/South Korea World Cup. It has the rhythm section and drum sound of White Pony (Maverick) era Deftones, the vocals of Corey Taylor circa self-titled Slipknot album (Roadrunner), and the overall industrial aggression of Obsolete (Roadrunner) era Fear Factory (in a time before they were).
At first the sound does have hints of the recent Djent sound, but then when the chundering riffs kick in you realise that this is indeed paying homage to Burton C. Bell and co rather than doing directly for the more current range of bands they could have taken influence from; if you listen to ‘Only One’ or ‘Me Inside’ you’ve pretty much heard the tracks on here.
If you liked balls to the wall Nu Metal without some of the despicable rapping then this maybe for you. There are plenty of downtuned moments dispersed in between the barrage of Dino Cazares off cuts that make up the majority of the album. You could never criticise the album for lacking punch or aggression, but there is a quarrel with the album lacking originality. This is a record whose influences all cut off around the same time people started to buy clothes that weren’t four sizes too big for them.
Overall, as a fan of the genre, World War 3 is an enjoyable listen but it doesn’t progress any further than being a massive nostalgia trip. If you at any stage wore a baseball cap and some shorts big enough to catch basketballs in them then this album will certainly take you back to that time, the only problem is that the original albums will already do that for you and are of incredibly better quality.
6.0/10
DAN O’BRIEN