A good place to start, but its predictability means this needs a little more imagination
From the first few songs on ‘State Of The Union Speech’, I was hopeful that here was a promising new band coming through into a wider arena from their native Austria. Loxodrome’s boisterous style is a raw yet well-honed return to good old-fashioned metal from the likes of Rage Against The Machine, System Of A Down and Machine Head, rather than some of the over-theatrical and uninspired styles of metal that seem to be surfacing recently.
The album has plenty going for it, and opening with ‘Speechless’, a short, simple riff and clean-picking combination, ‘State Of The Union Speech’ builds into a style of chugging guitars and fast up-tempo rhythms with ‘Open Doors’. Songs like ‘LXD’, ‘Bad Medicine’ and ‘Mole’ add to the no-nonsense effect with their swirling drums, driving basslines and undulating pace. ‘That’s Me’ has a really quirky Kornish sounding riff, a band that Loxodrome refer to as an influence, and ‘State Of The Union Speech,’ the final track on the album, utilises a vintage-sounding recorded speech to give atmosphere to the song, along with marching drums and rasping backing vocals. The band’s Austrian accents give a strange and distinctive dimension to the vocals, and the use of keyboards in some of the tracks adds an interesting element to an otherwise traditionally-based sound of heavy churning drumbeats and riff-laden melodies.
However, some songs do seem to miss the mark and it is clear that Loxodrome need to pull a little more out of the bag. ‘Hard As Bone’ is quite a generic-sounding track, with a chorus that feels a little clumsy and dull. ‘Raise Your Fist’ has a slightly amateurish feel to it, especially the spoken sections of the song. The puzzling lyrics also leave much to be desired; in fact it’s difficult to understand some of it, and even more difficult to guess what this could be. ‘Take’ is another culprit, with its clunky and slightly irritating bridge section coupled with a vaguely familiar lead riff that seems to have been used earlier in the album. Most importantly, none of the songs really stick out above any of the others, good or bad, which is a slightly worrying prospect for any band because no-one wants to be greeted with indifference. Ultimately they use similar riffs, melodies and hooks throughout the album, the result being a bland and predictable affair, which I found doesn’t get any better with time. As I listened to it for the third time on the drive home, I thought I was listening to one particular song, and it wasn’t until halfway through that I realised it was actually another track.
Likeable and accessible but safe and slightly boring, this album has much more to do to take it into the same league as it aspires to. The only experimentation Loxodrome do undertake doesn’t quite work, like the harmonised screaming in ‘That’s Me’ which really doesn’t sound very good at all. However, they’re such a new band that this can be forgiven to a point; the fundamental elements are there, and Loxodrome can only learn from this first album.