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Artist: SYMPTOMS
Album: Symptoms That You Are Alive
Year: 2007
Not too long ago, the friendly industrial metal reviewer
of Avantgarde Metal asked me if I heard of an Italian
band called Symptoms. Back then, I had to answer
negatively. He sent me a link, I checked it out,
downloaded and reviewed their first EP and let it
impress me. Like I mentioned in the EP review, a full-lenght
was coming really soon. So soon, that it’s here already!
Symptoms That You Are Dead contains eleven tracks, and
is released in summer 2007.
‘Dead for 30 seconds’ has the honour to open this debut
full-lenght. It opens with atmospheric electronics, to
be followed by a pretty gentle industrialized metal
track, with some experimental sampling and programming
and gentle vocal lines. The weirdest thing of this track
is the high bleep in the middle of the track, followed
by a silence after which the track continues again (on a
more brutal way). ‘Symptoms that you are alive’ is more
atmospheric. It consists of cold keylines, very
experimental and wicked programming, strong guitarriffs
and decent vocal lines. ‘Coma’ is an instrumental
intermezzo, with ambient and electronic touches, to be
followed by ‘City Lights’. Its a pretty accessable and
powerful midtempo industrial metal track, with very
wicked sampling and guitarwork. The uptempo parts bring
more power to the track, without losing the original
atmosphere. ‘Mental disorder’ is an uptempo industrial
metal track, which is all instrumental. ‘A moment for
self analsys’ is another instrumental intermezzo, with
some future pop in the beginning and some ambient in the
end. ‘Life regained’ contains thrashy guitarwork, strong
and powerful drumming and extreme though easy listening
vocal lines. ‘Awake’ is my favourite track on the
release. It contains wicked drumming, very cool and
experimental FX works and beautiful keylines. The vocals
fit this track excellently, which turns out to be a
modern cyber metal track. ‘Finding Peace’ is
instrumental again. It’s a sludge/doom song, with an
experimental intermezzo. The track isn’t actually raw
enough to be a good value for the record. ‘Coming back
home’ follows that path, only this time there are vocal
lines included. It’s a decent composal, but not really
something they should have put on this record. ‘Just
noise...’ is the melancholic, electronic outro of this
album, which is despite the name a pretty beautiful
thing.
In the end, this turned out to be a very strong and
variative album. It should have recieved an absolute
top-score, but ‘Finding Peace’ and ‘Coming Back Home’
pretty much sucked in my opinion, so the score is a
little bit brought down. Still, a very good score for an
excellent release. Go and try this band if you have some
spare time left.
Vote: 90 / 100
Review by: Gerardo |
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01. Dead for 30 seconds
02. Symptoms that you
are alive
03. Coma
04. City lights
05. Mental disorder
06. A moment for self
analysis
07. Life regained
08. Awake
09. Finding Peace
10. Coming back home
11. Just noise... |
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