Review Summary: When it is all said and done, the vocalist does not fit the band, the guitars sound like their ripped from thrash’s forefathers, the bass is rarely shown in the mix, and the drums are simple but ineffective at times.
Cradle To Grave is a Canadian Thrash Metal band. Cradle To Grave began in 2002 when Denis Barthe was looking for a new project after his old band dissolved. After recruiting a few bandmates through an ad in a local newspaper, they set out to record music. In 2004 they signed with Year of the Sun Records and recorded their debut album
CTG later that year. Four years later and we now have their second full-length album,
Texas Medicine. The band decided to tap Devin Townsend (
Lamb of God, SYL,
Darkest Hour,
Misery Signals,
GWAR) to mix and master the new album.
The vocalist of Cradle To Grave is Greg Cavanagh. Immediately you can tell that Pantera and Thrash inspire his vocals. This is already two strikes against him: Pantera is the worst of the big Thrash bands and he is not bringing anything unique to the table. With that said, Greg hurts the band and prevents them from having a lot of potential. He is too mono-toned while rarely showing off any range. When Greg goes to clean vocals, once during the whole CD, it is decent at best. The same can go for when he goes to the predictable whisper trash vocal style on “
Light”. There are two tracks that the band goes punk when they should have just held true to their genre. On “
From Nowhere to Nowhere” and “
F*ck It Up” the vocalist tries his best to go punk, but it does not come off well at all.
Greg is not all bad though, he has his moments. In the middle of “
Broken God”, there is a nice death growl. The vocals have a raw, thrashy feel to them, a good example of this is found on “
At War With Myself”. The vocals get thashier near the middle of “
Five Years of Fire”, which is pulled off well. The only portion of the album where the vocals are catchy are at the beginning of “
At Last” when Greg holds out his notes. “
At Last” does start off with the cheesy chorus they put at the beginning of the track. Glenn Chisholm (Bass) useally stays with the drummer but is heard at the front of the mix for 2 seconds on "
F*ck It Up".
Denis “Sasquatch” Barthe is the founder and guitarist of Cradle To Grave. A thrashy southern guitar riff starts the album. This album is full of distorted and chugging guitars. It gets to the point where almost every song sounds the same. A homage to their influence, or rip-off artist if you may, is a technical guitar riff found on “
Broken God” that would fit perfect in a Pantera song. Another Homage to their thrash roots is the thrashy clean guitar riff in the background near the end of “
At War With Myself”. There are two great intro riffs on “
Five Years of Fire” and “
I Am Nothing” while there is a sludgy guitar intro on “
Beheaded in Paris”.
It would not be a metal album without leads and solos. On the album, all the guitar leads are nothing to write home about. They seem to just be placed there for show and to not add any substance into the song. The solos on the other hand are a mixed bag of tricks. Some are decent, “
Five Years of Fire”, while some are just horrible, “
I Am Nothing” and “
At Last”. A great opening solo on “
Nothing Left To Taste” is met with another great solo in the middle of the same song while a slow solo in the middle of “
Light” turns out good after a decent start. Acoustic guitar is found on “
From Nowhere to Nowhere” and the instrumental “
Daughters”. There is only one breakdown, and it is a decent one to finish the song “
Five Years of Fire”.
Matt Fowler (Drums) starts the album off with a double bass drum pattern that eventually adds cymbals into the mix. He then finishes “
Broken God” off with a simple drum outro. The only other drum-oriented intro is “
Light”, and it comes off great. Something you come to expect from every extreme metal band is the use of a lot of double bass, Matt is no different. However, there is a nice snare line near the end of “
Light”. All in all the drums never really go over and beyond on anything.
Cradle To Grave is a band that is trying their best to jump on this modern day Thrash movement. When it is all said and done, the vocalist does not fit the band, the guitars sound like their ripped from thrash’s forefathers, the bass is rarely shown in the mix, and the drums are simple but ineffective at times. This band may be able to ride the wave to a larger label, but they will never come close to making it big. The one thing that will benefit this band the most is a new vocalist. Is the claim that Cradle To Grave are the leaders in Canadian Metal worthy of this band? HELL NAW!
Quote:
Rating (?/5)
Vocals: 2.5
Lyrics: 3
Guitars: 3
Bass: 2
Drums: 2.5
Production: 4
Creativity: 1.5
Lasting Value: 1.5
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