Review Summary: An easily identified debut that manages to showcase many different aspects of nu metal, but suffers from a lack of distinctiveness, creativity and mediocre lyrics
Adema, a band that even nu metal lovers seem to stray away from at the mere mention, released their first album clearly in hope of being able to gain popularity from the recent outburst of nu metal acts. Despite originally being granted many positive reviews from professional critics and having several hit radio singles that plagued the 2001 wave of nu metal music, Adema’s debut was often criticised and pushed away by many music lovers, with many finding it a childish attempt to replicate Linkin Park’s Aggressive but successful radio friendly sound and was frequently regarded as one of the worst nu metal albums around at the time. While this may be an unneeded re-cap for those of you that forgot about this band and can’t stand to remember their existence, it seems as if this album has been lost in a sea of hate since its release, stopping many from giving it a chance,. While this album is now quite dated and still suffers from its dull and forced lyrics, there are still moments of decent musicianship and memorable riffs.
For starters, a very noticeable trait is the clustered combination of many of the other nu metal acts that were rising to dominance at the time, such as Korn, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and even Nonpoint, with the band attempting to rise to a similar level of maturity. While the songs ‘Everyone’ and ‘Giving In’ have decent riffs and some well written lyrics, the rest of the tracks simply don’t connect with the listener or grab their attention, both for their lyrics and the lack of originality due to easily recognised influences that make it seem a lot like the band aren’t doing what they enjoy, but more what will gain them popularity. So while ‘Everyone’ and ‘Giving In’ show that the band are capable, the rest of the album starts dragging itself down and has moments that seem forced and even dated, with simple song structures and lyrics about drug addiction on many of the songs. It never rises its head above mediocrity and sometimes goes far below with an embarrassing rap like verse in ‘Skin’ and strange space-rock like production In ‘Pain Inside’ as well as suffering from a dull vocal performance which lacks all emotion and completely unmemorable choruses
So even as a fan of nu metal, I find this album as confusing as I do annoying, simply because there are points the band shows some maturity and/or decent musicianship. While it starts promisingly enough it will lose all attention after the 6th song and most likely now spends a lot of time in many collections as one of the several bad albums teens brought when nu metal was popular. Still despite the hate bombardment after it’s release this album doesn’t manage to seem as terrible as some might suggest, it simply didn’t do enough new when it was released and still suffers from the same problems now, so while diehard fans of nu metal will most likely find this slightly underrated, many will agree that this album simply doesn’t have a lot going for it, particularly when compared to all the other rising star bands in nu metal.
So for any nu metal haters, don’t listen, you have been warned.
