Review Summary: Metal from an anti-metal culture
When looking for material to review on here on sputnik, I'm inherently drawn to records remaining unreviewed, or where I can delve a little deeper regarding the band above and beyond discussing the record itself. Intro Spectre by Chromium affords me both of these options. Since I'm fairly certain the overwhelming majority of folks who ever read this won't have a clue who Chromium were, I want to start with a bit of history lesson on them, and why they are so unlikely to exist.
See, like me, Chromium hail from South Africa, a country that can largely be considered hostile to any type of music heavier than Nickelback. This is largely due to a multitude of strongly conservative cultures and very deep religious influences which sadly dictate tremendous amounts of people's personal lives to extents I don't think most Europeans or Americans would understand anymore. For an international analog, I suppose one can imagine the deep south, rural communities of the US for an idea. As a result of this, rock and especially metal shows are exceedingly rare here, with only mega-popular acts like Metallica and that ilk very rarely performing shows here -and planned concerts are often protested against to the point of cancellation. As one might imagine, this strong opposition can be discouraging to both metal fans and musicians in a culture where it is incredibly commonplace for people to experience belittlement, judgement and estrangement simply for their musical tastes. I know this happens everywhere in the world, but it's truly notable here. As such, not many metal bands emerge here, and precious few gain any kind of traction to even put together a demo, let alone three records.
In spite of the unpopularity of metal music in SA, Chromium emerged from our small underground scene. Here was a band from a city nearby that made music which sounded so much like all the international bands thirteen year-old me was enjoying at the time. When someone pointed out that these were local musicians my brain could barely accept it. Fast forward a few years owning all their CD's, I got to see a number of their live performances whilst at university. For a metal fan like me utterly starved of live experiences this was truly a defining moment in my history of enjoying music.
Alright, that's a lot of history. So what about the music? Intro Spectre is a rather difficult to nail down mixture of metal genres and influences, including a bit of groove, thrash, nu-metal and a touch of metalcore. While my opinions on this band formed very long ago, and are admittedly biased by my positive disposition and relation to the band, I still maintain that the instrumentals on offer here are of a high quality and a fairly distinctive stlye. Chromium's sound is defined by down tuned guitar tones, with metronomically precise start-stop riffs and an overall extremely co-ordinated interplay between all the instruments. The instrumentation here always imparts the mental image and sound of a massively powerful V8 engine vacillating between idling and gently revving when I listen - see the song "Control" if you want to see what I mean.
Chromium features two vocalists - this is where I expect the most friction for most listeners to arise. The unclean vocals, while enjoyable to me feature a rather unique sounding technique which sounds like a kind of inhaled whispered scream for which I don't know many analogs to refer to. The clean vocals courtesy of guitarist Jared Gunston are rock solid in my opinion with nothing to complain about and I enjoyed them at all times. The vocal styles enjoy about a fifty-fifty split.
If any of this interests you, if you only listen to one song off this record, let it be "Set me Free". This was incidentally the first Chromium track I heard and remains my favorite across their solid three records. It starts with some acoustic sounding guitar strings, before sinister sounding electric guitar notes rise abruptly. Next, the drums explode with their signature mechanical precession. Mellow clean verses lead to an earworm of a chorus with an addictive guitar riff rising above the occasional screams. The song progresses to a simple but intense drum solo with some intense bass licks (which in my opinion should be much more commonplace). By far the highlight of the record for me.
Much of the record continues with some variation of the same, and as a whole some repetition and cheesy angsty lyrics drag the experience down a little. Cutting two tracks for a total of ten would probably help the flow as an album and prevent some of the repetition. These negatives, together with the sometimes grating vocals, are not enough to tarnish what is a special experience from a band who were likely up against it all during their all-too-short career.
Since this review is now more of a homage than anything, let me throw aside my critic hat altogether. Chromium makes music which I love. At this point I don't know whether that stems more from my attachment to it or the quality of the music itself. I suspect both. This band was unbelievably influential to me and filled me with pride in my people and gave me a sense of belonging to an actual metal community - never take for granted your ability to easily see live performances! That said, I think there is an audience out there who would enjoy this music as much I have, and I hope I can influence even a handful of folks to just give this a shot in honour of these personal legends.
Recommended tracks:
Set me Free
Control
Ex Amino
