Review Summary: Comprised mainly with semi-coherent growls, technical guitar solos and blast-beats on the drum, this gets tedious which is the major downfall of this album.
Daath are an American metal band hailing from Georgia. The Hinderers is Daath’s first album with Roadrunner Records which was released this year (2007). Their sound comprises of various sub-genres within metal such as death, black and thrash metal.
There are three main elements which are found in Daaths music which is semi-growl style vocals which is mostly coherent, technically proficient solos on guitars and thunderous blast-beats with the drums. This makes the music a bit tedious and predictable as there is not a lot of change throughout the album. However, songs like the opener Subterfuge works very well due to these elements. They also add a keyboard and electronic effects on some tracks such as ‘Under a somber sign’ which creates what the title suggests a somber mood with the keyboard. The electronic effect adds a different mood in the song ‘Who will take the blame?’, however, this gets repetitive as it’s mainly the same effect recycled. Although, these moments are few and far between as the vocals don’t change at all throughout the album. This limits the amount of replay value due to it becoming a tedious affair. They do try to do something different in the song ‘Dead on the dance floor’ but this is vastly out of the norm with any other song. It sounds forced as the electronic effect seems like it is a computer generated xylophone or an instrument similar to that. This does not work as there aren’t any other songs that flow like the aforementioned song.
The production is clear due to the finances that would have been available due to them being on a major label. This can sometimes be a downfall because of the styles which are incorporated within their music. It doesn’t really create any atmosphere in the music which it should considering the concept which the album is based upon. The concept is the tree of life and the songs are all about the thirteen points of this tree which each song represents. The problem is that the vocals are not entirely coherent as there are moments which the lyrics are not understood. This is not uncommon for this type of music as there are a lot of metal bands which could be named that have this aspect.
They have a lot of potential to make a very original and ground-breaking album. They have a lot of very talent with the various instruments. However, they lack some above average songwriting as their song structures are fairly similar throughout the album. Most of the songs have the same three things which are clean growls, a guitar solos and blast-beats on the drums. However, when they do try to change it is vastly different and sounds like they just changed for the sake of changing. It didn’t feel like there was a purpose other then that. It is a decent album but with too many flaws and doesn’t really show their potential.
2.5/5
