Clean hardcore?
Have you ever been really ill? Head down the toilet, sweat dripping from your nose as you dry heave and just want to be sick but nothing is coming up? You hup and hup making gagging noises until eventually sweet release comes in the evacuation of your stomach. Now imagine singing a song at the same time and you would sound something like the first track on this CD.
As soon as the singing started on this album I thought 'Oh bloody hell another hardcore album' but luckily I was wrong. Opening track 'In spite of you' does come across this way with growling verses and clean chorus's but this gives way to the best track on the album 'Time after time' which has a bass line that would be banned under the Geneva convention such is it's bowel loosening sound. This is also the most successful track for singer Lennard Barendse, who manages to get the best balance between his growling and his clean stuff, Lennards clean range is very limited and struggles on some of the later songs when the melody drifts to the top of his range but on 'Time after time' he nails it.
Musically this is a heavy album with grinding guitars and a rhythm section to get a few mosh pits going. Most of the later songs have clean vocals and it sounds to me like a hardcore band that is trying to evolve. This can only be a good thing as I think that the oversaturation of the hardcore market has led to its slow demise, it's either change or die, I suspect most will die as the hardcore style doesn't leave much to work with in the change department.
Anyway I digress, Forcefeed have created an album full of heavy downtuned riffs and pounding drums overlaid with vocals that actually benefit from some shouting. This is all mixed quite well to create a heavy slice of metal for fans of bands like 'Drowning pool'
They'll be touring the UK, Spain and Germany this year so you will get the chance to check them out for yourself; they're touring in support of this album which is actually a re-release from 2005, they will be working on their third album this year too so who knows what they'll sound like, two years is a long time, I suspect they'll move to the more melodic end of things, there's a hint of it on this album and it's when they shine the brightest.
www.forcefeed.nl
www.myspace.com/forcefeedband