Chaos Calling – Beyond Illusions
Writing music for an instrumental band requires a slightly different process than when writing 'songs'; it needs to have plenty of variety as your typical verse/chorus arrangement won't hold the listener's interest. With this in mind it's not hard to tell that Chaos Calling were originally a progressive metal band without a vocalist; the songs are maze-like with plenty of twists and turns. The music is tight and precise, versatile without being flash, but unfortunately there's nothing that really grabs you by the ears.
A couple of minutes into opening track 'Thin Ice' and it's obvious that Rage Against The Machine are a big influence on Chaos Calling. The riffing is in the vein of Tom Morello (as is the dodgy-sounding solo about 4 minutes in) whilst vocalist Jacko comes across as a toothless Zack De La Rocha wannabe.
Rage Against The Machine-style political lyrics also run through much of the album with 'slogans' such as 'Kill the preacher, don't shoot the teacher' which is repeated ad nauseam on 'Push The System', while other songs explore bad relationships with gems like 'I've had enough of this, you're taking the piss' and 'I can't take it anymore, every single thing that you have ruined, you're nothing but a fucking whore'.
It's possible that Chaos Calling would be more engaging if they eschewed the dreaded 'rap-metal' sound completely(musically there're plenty of other styles in the mix) and had a more powerful vocalist; despite Jacko's attempt at emulating De La Rocha he just doesn't convey any sense of the impassioned outrage needed to pull it off and, when actually singing rather than rapping, his weaknesses as a singer are obvious.