Figure of Six - 'Step One'
Although the biography included with my promo copy of 'Step One', the debut album by Figure of Six, claims that the Italians are "impossible to categorize", it gamely takes a crack at it anyway with the following shudder-inducing sentence: "...the easiest way to describe their sound is they [sic] could possibly be the missing link between Linkin' Park [sic] and Slipknot". As I consider both of these bands to be festering boils on the metal scene's genitals, it was with a heavy heart that I put the CD into my machine and pressed 'play'.
...Only to find that it was not as bad as I had feared. Although clearly built upon nu-metal foundations - most noticeably in the shifting drum rhythms and the stop/start chug of the detuned guitars - Figure of Six have added enough wrinkles to the formula to ensure that 'Step One' is not a total exercise in redundancy. Some fairly nice melodic choruses and phrases are employed to good effect, and the band aren't afraid to put more thought into their arrangements than simply obeying the nu-metal song construction rules; it's not all quiet verse/loud chorus or heavy verse/melodic chorus here. The often heavily processed and effects-laden vocals weave in and out of the mix, providing the main focus of a tune at some points and raging almost inaudibly in the background at others. The album was obviously recorded on quite a low budget and the production is therefore fairly rough, but this is actually preferable to the polished sterility that is the hallmark of so much nu-metal.
The seven-piece band includes the usual metal compliment of a brace of guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and Giacomo Lavatura on vocals and flute... hang on a minute, flute?? Banish all thoughts of Jethro Tull and Ian Anderson standing on one leg from your mind though (look them up on the internet if you don't know who the hell I'm talking about, and then banish all thoughts of them from your mind). The flute is so distorted and sonically fiddled-with that you'd be hard-pressed to identify it most of the time. The band have also unwisely included a DJ in their line-up to provide scratches, which I still consider to be the most unwelcome and unnecessary addition to metal's colour palette to have come out of the 1990s. There's a keyboardist in their ranks too, but the electronic elements of their sound can essentially be boiled down to a number of short intros with dub beats and otherworldly keyboard sounds, and sundry background beeps, bloops and synthesised strings during the main bodies of the songs. Rarely do the keyboards play a part in carrying the tune of a track; in general, they are there to provide an extra layer of sound. The main exceptions are 'Darkside3', an essentially instrumental track that features throbbing electronics and lots of distorted but recognisable flute, and 'Inside', which has a cleaner flute sound and some beautiful piano passages.
I have to come clean: I don't like nu-metal. Figure of Six, however, have enough of their own personality to make 'Step One' palatable to even a close-minded old bastard like me. Just don't mention Linkin Park and Slipknot again, OK?