Semic Stains, a melodic death metal band from Greece, is a band that, unfortunately, tried too hard to be under the guidelines of their particular genre. They are the perfect example of a band who is a slave to the music they're trying to create, as if they're too nervous or hesitant on making anything that hasn't been heard before.
To the band's credit, though, they are pre-full-length album, this release being an EP that only features three songs that total about 12 minutes. But I can't help but get past the way this band sounds--generic.
The album begins with what I think to be the weakest song here: The Martyrdom
Altar. We open with a promising-enough riff that sounds like it could be a guitar intro to a
Megadeth song, and when the ball starts rolling, so to speak, you're hit with a particular riff (this being around the 40 second mark) that's nice and flashy, a good hook. It's at this point I think hey, this might turn out to be pretty good. But the riff goes on.
And on. There are breaks in the pattern, but that same riff comes in again and again, and before long it starts to get annoying.
And from there they continue to milk it and milk it, turning the riff into something ugly before the song closes. The breaks between the riff are pretty much a chug-fest, accompanied by unvaried machine-gunning from the drums. The vocalist comes off as particularly irritating, but there is defenitely a strong effort put forth. His vocals are a rattly shriek, and this is what you'll hear for most of the album. They don't seem to be able to hold any note for more than a second or two, and they come off as fairly amateur. These vocals are accompanied by random snippets of melodic singing that come and go without warning or reason. I guess it's to add variety, but the melodic vocals are just so oddly placed and barely show their face for more than three consecutive seconds, as if the band was worried that people would think they were pussies if they pressed their luck on vocals that don't sound like a cat being stepped on.
Instrumentally, this band is competent enough, never doing anything overly flashy or insane, but doing enough that you know they can play their instruments well. The guitars do a lot of palm-muted chuggy riffs, but they shoot off a melodic riff every now and again, as well as pretty nice solo sections that usually steal the show for the song that's being played. The drums are good too, but there are passages where, say, the snare is overused, or something along those lines. They don't do much besides keeping time, and the variety that they casually offer here and there is pretty refreshing. You can hear the bass guitar fairly well, but this is a guitar-and-vocals album, no doubt. The bass usually just keeps itself protected behind whatever the guitar is doing, and I don't recall it ever jumping over its boundary and playing its own thing. Buuuuuut it's at least a little audible, so that's good for me.
The next and final two songs are both better than The Martyrdom
Altar, but not much. There is the odd riff that does stick in my mind here and there throughout the album, but mostly what we get is plodding on the guitars and average drumming. The album only really shines during the solo sections and places where the chugging guitars let up, but there aren't really too many of those. For the most part, this album is quite generic, maybe only amounting to being good material to bang your head to, or stuff you can rile up a mosh pit with. The whole thing sounds rather constricted, and as I said the band members seem tentative about trying anything creative. This album is basically just a chuggy, chunky melodeath album with odd snippets of good riffs and solos thrown in for good luck. Fortunately this EP only spans 12 minutes so it never wears on me too much, and the shining moments are easier to pick out among the three songs. There's nothing here that you couldn't get out of a
Dark Tranquility album or a
Soilwork album.
I think this band has boundary issues, plain and simple. They need to try to make something of themselves, rahter than inserting themselves into what already exists. They're blatant trend followers for the moment, and while I understand that this is a band with very little material who is only now emerging from the ground, I think that there's more that they could have done to make this a good EP. As I said though, there are good moments in this album that do sufficently prevent the music from being flat out bad, but even those feel somewhat constricted. I hope that this band figures out how to make the music their own, because for now this is a generic EP and a generic band with little to be found and much to be desired.
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