Review Summary: Walking With Strangers have defied expectations in order to forge a powerful sophomore album.
Hailing from a country with such an incredible amount of heavy metal music history, Walking With Strangers' brand of progressive metalcore is somewhat of an anomaly. Sweden is known to many metal fans as a breeding ground for many influential death metal, melodic death metal and black metal groups. Walking With Strangers, with their hardcore and atmospheric-influenced metalcore sound, certainly defy the musical tropes Sweden's metal scene is known for. Alongside bands like Adept and Dead By April, Walking With Strangers are one of the country's few popular metalcore groups. Enter
Terra, Walking With Strangers' sophomore effort. The album is the long-awaited follow up to the band's debut,
Hardships. Released through Burning Heart Records,
Terra represents a spectacular evolution for Walking With Strangers. The album is tight, stimulating, and sonically beautiful. Granted, this is not At The Gates, Entombed or Amon Amarth, but perhaps
Terra will establish Walking With Strangers as a legitimate force within Sweden's metal scene.
Terra was self-produced by Walking With Strangers guitarist Pontus Johansson, and mixed and mastered by American engineer Brian Hood. Neither Johansson or Hood dissapoint on
Terra's
production. The band's instrumentals are finely recorded and mixed, and the final master is clean and rich. The record's drums are a nice standout, too, complimented by an incredible sounding snare and punchy bass drums. The entire release's production, from its guitars to its recognizable bass and tidy vocals, is simply excellent.
The best part about
Terra is the way Walking With Strangers blend hard-hitting metalcore with an incredible amount of atmosphere. For the most part,
Terra lies on a foundation of many established metalcore tropes. Breakdowns are a staple of nearly every song on the record. “Powerless” features burning blast beats. There are a great deal of familiar metalcore guitar, bass and drum licks. But, it is Walking With Strangers' fascinating use of riffing that creates an incredible amount of texture within
Terra. Every song on the album features unique guitar parts that make them dynamic. “Carry The World” has a haunting, fast paced starting groove that sends chills down the spine. “Powerless”, contrary to its ironic title, sports incredibly punchy guitar playing throughout. “False Flag” and “Cold North” have more subdued atmospheric focuses when compared to other tracks on
Terra, but they provide some necessary, traditional metalcore distraction from the more risky parts of the release.
The real standout on
Terra is “Echoes”, the third song and second single off of the album. “Echoes” encapsulates everything that makes
Terra great. The song has an absolutely chilling tone. It is technical in its instrumentation. Walking With Strangers' use of electronics and sombre piano give it a deep fabric of emotion, which is further propelled by vocalist Robin Shulz's aching performance. “Echoes” is an incredible song, and the best track on the record.
Terra further distinguishes itself by featuring minimal clean vocals. This breaks with the trend set by numerous progressive metalcore bands, such as Erra, Volumes and Northlane, who use clean singing frequently. Schulz's harsh dominance over the album gives it a dimension of heaviness that contrasts nicely with its softer ambience. Moreover,
Terra's two instrumental tracks are a nice touch. “Shores of the World” is a nice change of pace, and showcases Walking With Strangers' devotion to atmosphere. “Terra” ends the record on a relaxed note. While these two songs make up a small portion of the album, they fit nicely into the overall package.
As a whole,
Terra is a surprising record. The fact that such a delightful metalcore album came from Sweden came as a shock to me. Regardless, it is an exceptional sophomore effort. It is jam-packed with emotion and inspiration. It also represents a band that is truly coming into their own musically. That, in itself, is a wonderful sight to behold.
