8

A very commercial sound

Opening up with ‘Scream’, Kabang come at you with a heavy sound that is a metal/rock mixture. A wall of axe and drum work is fired at you backed by passionate vocals. ‘Stress Me Out’ is another wall of sound number with a heavy rhythm and in your face vocals that deliver some great lines, like ‘I can’t be living this way, you’re driving me insane. It’s only a matter of time, before I cross the line’. This has a dark menace to it amid flashes of lightning axe work. ‘Listen’ is a good number but here it suffers from ‘love and peace’ type lyrics – ‘Free your mind from all that holds you down, disconnecting all the negative energy’. This doesn’t the hardness to the music and vocal delivery. ‘Equilibrium’ holds your attention by a combination of caress and punch that work well. This number has excellent vocals. ‘Damaged’ displays a superb bass line, which really hits home and is complimented by controlled axe work. ‘The Mirror’ has great rhythm and moves smoothly through different volume levels, which shows it to be an excellently crafted number.

Through out this album the vocals are the thing that strike you, as they have more melody than your average screaming metal and are more defining than the music itself; however they don’t quite reach the point where they could be described as inspirational. Perhaps it is because the overall effect here is a very commercial sound.