Grunt free
Are you tired of all the growling and grunting in metal these days, it seems even the most innocuous band with the lightest pop metal style will suddenly start going for the cookie monster or screamcore vocals on the chorus. Most of the time this just makes them sound like everyone else and I predict that things will start to come around soon and bands will go back to clean vocals leaving the gravel voiced to their sub genres where they came from. Write it down for I have prophesised it. I like the harder stuff but hearing growling in every bloody thing is getting on my man breasts.
Morian don't have a growl in sight and are all the better for it, they have a rock/metal style that has been out of fashion for a while now, coming across like a metalled up Staind only not so depressed. It actually sounds refreshing to these battered ears; it comes to something when you're surprised that a singer doesn't growl.
Musically it's quite heavy in places to give it some gravitas and stop it sounding like Creed or something, keyboards are tastefully used and it has lots of widdly solos. You could release most of the album as singles if necessary which brings me neatly to the first single to be released from the album, it's called 'away from the sun' a rather poignant story of an elderly homeless man reflecting the events and mistakes of his past life. It would suit MTV down to the ground with acoustic guitars and understated metalness. Check it out on their Myspace page http://www.myspace.com/morian
I would recommend this album to anyone who is tired of all the gruntiness out there and wants something more traditional but not too soft, there is a great song on this album called 'recoil' that reminds me of a toned down Disturbed, it's a cracker. The whole album is of a good standard, it has lots of ideas, is well played and recorded but just never quite hits the heights it should have done.
"Hang on" you say, "you said it was good", well it is but I think it could have been great, It never soars when I think it could, some of these songs could have been built up much higher than they are to give them a more epic feeling and impact, it would have sacrificed some of them as single material but the album would have been bigger for it. If you like what you hear on myspace though don't let my thoughts put you off buying it as it's still a damn fine album.
Oh and to the guy on the right in the album photos I'm really not sure about those frilly cuffs on your net shirt.
www.morianband.com