Crossfaith-Zion EP
There are some bands who the first time you experience live also rip open your memory vaults and take a new room comfortably within them, to which you'll return to fondly for the rest of your life. Slipknot are one, Letlive. are another, While She Sleeps a third and Japanese electro-metal mentalists and innovators Crossfaith are another to add to that so exclusive of lists. Put simply, this band's live shows are like no other, have to be seen to be believed, and will take your head off in the way a flying horizontal guillotine will, commanding a crowd the way only a select number of bands can, which is staggering in their relative infancy.
Does their recorded output stand up to their live experience then? The answer is a giant yes and also one that puts them in a sphere all of their own. Like the also brilliant Enter Shikari do so well in blending a crazy mix of post-hardcore and electronic music, Crossfaith make a similar cocktail but instead with full-on bone-crushing metal that's so heavy it'll knock down walls and it's represented perfectly in their Zion EP. Monolith opens proceedings like an earthquake with huge down-tuned drops colliding with piercing keyboards and samples, formidable frontman Ken Koie sounding like a monstrous mix between Atreyu's Alex Varkatzas and Corey Taylor in full-on Slipknot fury and every song rampages and sways like a hungry velociraptor.
The brilliant thing as well is that the band are taking in a full and established range of electronics. Rather than just quickly throwing in a beepy keyboard during a breakdown, programming maestro Teru Tamano is evidently someone who deeply understands the workings and intricacies of electronic music and as a result dark and ominous dubstep wobbles dive suddenly into euphoric moments of euro-tinged euphoria through Prodigy-channelling rave and into detailed Nine Inch Nails-esque creations of atmosphere and soundscape as demonstrated on sublime instrumental Dialogue and then on the flip-side the band are heavy as a ton of bricks, no holding back whatsoever.
With the quintet currently putting the finishing touches to their forthcoming album with producer Machine in New York, this sets their stall out with serious conviction. If they can take this EP and progress upon it in the form of the album, the world is their's. Until then we wait with extremely excited anticipation, on the strength of this though it looks like there's going to be a mighty new force on the block come the summer.