Review Summary: A very heavy metal album from Threat Signal, unfortunatley it doesn't bring anything new in the metal field. A heavy but repetitive album.
Just a few days ago I was visiting a local market outside my home town; my primary goal was to find some new music. I had a look around and I found some albums, one
Eddie Meduza album (which I totally love) and one
Primal Fear album that I have not been able to listen through yet, but I also found a third album. I looked at the album cover and I thought it looked quite awesome, and it was also a limited version of that CD!
Threat Signal was the name on the album cover, they are labelled as an Industrial metal band but they still sound like your everyday metalcore band, like
Killswitch Engaged, or perhaps NU-metal bands like
Linkin Park. I had never heard of
Threat Signal before and I was preparing for the worst, this could be great or bad. I looked at the backside and all these guys looked very young, all had long hair except one with short spiky hair. Metalcore and NU-metal were the only genres that struck my mind when I looked at them, I had just made a total gamble when I bought the album and now I will tell what I think about this album.
Take
Killswitch Engaged,
Meshuggah,
Linkin Park, some splashes of
Pantera and some
Good Charlotte and you will have an idea of how
Threat Signal might sound like. The vocals are familiar to every band that I have listed here and the music is very familiar to
Meshuggah.
Threat Signal’s first album is called
Under Reprisal and it was recorded in 2005.
Under Reprisal is all about heaviness and anger, nearly every song has a chunky and staccato song pattern with melodic guitar solos and every one of the songs has the same style of vocal work. Harsh and hateful semi-growls, throat slitting shrieks and clean vocals are present in every song. Even though that this album is pretty extreme and raw there is still some melody scattered throughout the album material, mainly in the solos but also from electronics and such as well.
Jon Howard is the vocalist in this band but I’m afraid that
Jon does not impress me at all with his vocals. I prefer odd and strange vocals and this just felt so boring. First you have these loud semi-growls/screams, then later he changes to sudden shrieks and later some clean vocals. He has a really powerful metal voice but I don’t find the vocals impressive or good, more like average.
Kyle Mcknight and
Rich Howard plays the guitars. Once again I feel disappointed because the whole guitar work is so familiar to
Meshuggah. There are lots of heavy sudden staccato riffs and fast shredding in the songs but also some catchier riffs which has a better flow in them. The guitar solos are quite impressive though, the solos are somewhat technical and melodic and are quite enjoyable at times.
Marco Bressette follows the same pattern as the rhythm guitar. There are no standouts from the bassist,
Marco only provides a solid sound that increases the heavy wall of sound.
George Parfitt hammers on with the drums. Luckily this is not a drummer that uses a limited amount of drum patterns,
George delivers many different drum patterns which makes the songs a bit more interesting even though if almost all the songs follows a similar pattern. Double bass kicking, mid-paced patterns and other various drum patterns are spread throughout the tracks.
So do I think of this album? Well I didn’t like it; I bought it because I thought I could spend some extra money. This was after all a 50/50 gamble, maybe I would like the album but things became different when I started to listen and now I don’t like it. The reasons why I can’t enjoy this album is that this sounds like a super mix of other famous bands. You will only think
Meshuggah when you hear the instrument performances. The harsh vocals also feels so familiar to
Meshuggah’s vocalist
Jens Kidman and of course
Killswitch Engaged. I think that the clean vocals reminds you both of
Linkin Park and
Good Charlotte while the shrieks brings you back to
Pantera’s glory days. I did enjoy a few songs but I still have a hard time to get used to them since the vocals are the same all the time. First harsh, then shriek, then clean and then it repeats and repeats, it really consumes my patience. Things that I enjoyed when I listen to this album is mostly the clean vocals, some of the guitar solos and the tracks called
Now,
Rational Eyes and
A New Beginning.
When I was listening to this album I thought that I could make a real bash review. But then I thought that I should perhaps not even try to review
Threat Signal’s Under Reprisal since my knowledge about Industrial, NU-metal and metalcore are very small and limited. These are real musicians, they have released an album while I’m still trying to learn songs from old veteran thrash bands so I guess that I shouldn’t talk s*** about
Threat Signal’s music. But, I reviewed the album after all just to give you my full opinion about their first release. To me this was uninteresting and boring; if these guys want to strike big in the metal industry they better improve their skills, experiment or try other forms of metal. The only future I think is possible for these guys at the moment is if one of their tracks becomes a soundtrack in one of these low-budget teenage or action movies. Metalcore people would enjoy this more than other metal people; if you like metalcore and similar music then you will like this. But if you don’t like metalcore at all then leave this alone.
Positives
+ The guitar solos are very good
+ Very heavy and aggressive music
+ You get a cool logo sticker if you buy the limited version!
Negatives
- The album just repeats old stuff, nothing new
- The vocal work will definitely bore unless you happen to like these kinds of vocals
- The staccato song patterns make the album repetitive
- This sounds more like Metalcore, not Industrial
[b]Recommended Favourites[/i]
-- Rational Eyes
-- A New Beginning
I gambled and I lost, this album will only receive a 2/5.
