Review Summary: Bronson's début album features well-polished and engaging musicality and is an excellent display of their ability to create appealing material, despite a few minor tarnishes.
Bronson are a five-piece band from Melbourne, Australia. After being subjected to numerous name, line-up and style changes, they have managed to find a firm footing in their sound with their début album "Blood Brothers".
I developed an interest in Bronson after playing a local show with them as part of their supportive Australian tour for the album. After witnessing an exciting and energetic show, it seemed only fit for me to further invest my time in their material by listening to the album in full, and to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised.
The album kicks off with "Vivez Sur Vos Pieds..." a building, drum groove based introduction which not only creates tension within the listener, but also prepares them for what the album has to offer. Jay Clair's consistently impressive vocals suddenly alleviate this tension as "Right To Fight" commences and throws the listener into its aggressive riffage, rich with irresistibly head-banging qualities. This is furthermore accentuated by drummer Shane Turnville's fluctuations between normal and half-time beats. This track and comparable others such as "Claim The Throne" bear much resemblance to early Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall in terms of their basic, yet effective use of groove-based instrumentation.
Whilst Bronson's obvious groove element is present throughout all of "Blood Brothers", the album does offer much variety, with more hardcore-esque songs such as "The Dispossessed", "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and "Fallout", featuring the very effective use of clean vocal harmonies and clean guitar parts. The introduction to "Revenge" also features a heavily reverberated clean guitar and bass line, backed up by supportive drumming. This is almost comparable to bands which incorporate an instrumental focus such as Misery Signals, August Burns Red or even aspects of Devin Townsend's work. Bronson's ability to incorporate different styles of metal is also evident in album closer and title track "Blood Brothers" which borders doom metal in its long, drawn out instrumental section which contrarily would have become quite bland if it were not for the excellent use of a guest female vocalist. This breathes life and emotion into the song, which in turn makes it quite a stand-out on the album.
Another aspect of "Blood Brothers" which I believed was well executed was the underlying theme of war and politics. The album itself begins with a flurry of hard-panned excerpts of political speeches from history relating to war and terrorism. The concept of nuclear weapons is also introduced into this theme in the beginning of "Fallout", which involves a historical and almost haunting recording of the fatal capabilities of nuclear weapons.
Although many musical, instrumental and theme-based aspects of this album are very well executed, "Blood Brothers" is not without its flaws. Songs such as "Assassin's Greed" and "Claim The Throne" fail to incorporate the same amount of variety an flowing nature as their variational counterparts. Whilst it is obvious that these songs were intended to be angry and more aggressive, their sections sound repetitive at times and lack the amount of polish that many of the aforementioned tracks display. However, as these repetitive moments are few-and-far-between, it does not drastically tarnish the overall quality of the album.
The album closes with "...Ou Mourez Sur Vox Genoux", a fitting finale as it features the same drum beat as the introductory track but progresses into a more open-sounding breakdown. The fact that both the introductory and closing tracks translate from French to English as "Live On Your Feet..." and "...Or Die On Your Knees" respectively adds a compliment to the war-related theme and overall polish and attention to detail of the album.
Through the use of variety, well polished and engaging songs and an underlying theme, "Blood Brothers" is an excellent display of Bronson's talent and offers an insight into the quality of material we should expect from them in the future.
