Review Summary: Are they a band who’s just interested in following a trend that spread over the internet...? My answer: No.
Uneven Structure is a band mainly from France, a country from which each year past it seems that heavy music in general is just gaining popularity and so forth is giving birth to leading acts in the scene (Gojira being one good example). Probably if you haven’t heard of them, you’re just wondering, what could they offer to my ears? What kind of auditive scenario I could experiment with them? I don’t blame you for these questions. Now that humanity has just entered year 2010, we’ve seen the perpetration in the last couple of years of a new wave of bands executing what we refer as “djent”, but also, in the time being, its massive impact in the community has been such that this musical tendency has been referred to vaguely as the “new metalcore”.
Does
Uneven Structure fall into this? Are they a band who’s just interested in following a trend that spread over the internet...? My answer: No. They recently released and EP called 8, a plain and simple title that brings us an interesting approach to a complex musical extravaganza. I must recall first and foremost the influence from Meshuggah, specifically from their albums Catch Thirtythree and Nothing, something I have to admit I enjoy; I’ve never considered that having a similar composition skill as other band should be a bad thing. The tracks blend into each other as we can appreciate too in Catch Thirtythree, which obviously lead me to think that was their objective.
The production is very good, and being developed which such a humble equipment is endearing (you can check the studio pictures in their myspace). Invoking Meshuggah once more, I have discovered that albums like I’ve previously mentioned compared to 8 sound weak; I enjoyed so much the punch the guitars have, the low end is spectacular and such tone just resembles bands like Four Question Marks on their album Aleph. This characteristic is quite revealing, since Meshuggah are a renowned band, and yet they don’t sound as heavy as other band nowadays, perhaps is not their intention to do so, but is something to think about.
The drums as well as the electronic elements have their peaks and downs, being sometimes a little dull or uncreative, and sometimes brilliant. One of my favourite tracks of the EP called “Egocentric Focus” features one of the most sick drum patterns I’ve heard in this kind of music; full of syncopation and groove. As far as the electronics go, nothing too intrepid nor fancy, some keyboards thrown here and there, to make a little ambiance among other minor details. Another fact that will catch your attention is that the vocals were recorded by Daniel Ädel from Vildhjarta; I think they were underproduced, and whilst the vocal performance seems to be good, the underproduction doesn’t help to appreciate it.
This band is young and is still looking forward to evolve and find their artistic truth, however, this EP showcase a prelude to something that could be very promising.
