A while ago our own Sledgehammer Messiah was blown away by the unsigned Dutch band Obsidian, that released their debut, Emerging, themselves. Their vocalist left after recording this debut, and after this a new vocalist was found in Robbe K, also known for handling the mic in Disavowed and Arsebreed. So they re-release their debut album with new vocals, and through a label this time!

Rusty Cage Records sure starts out nice with the signing of this band, because this ain’t your everyday Metallica fans trying to pluck some noise out of their instruments. As Sledgehammer stated in his review of this album, the band sounds mostly like Meshuggah, and since they’re Dutch, Textures surely must be noted as an influence. Textures guitarist Jochem also co-produced and mixed this album by the way, and he did a superb job! The production is crystal clear, while it remains quite brutal.

 

I checked this band out after reading the previous review, but I didn’t like that vocalist Serge at all. So I was quite curious what Robbe K would bring to the band. His brutal throat mainly maims out Meshuggah like vocal lines, but that is the only part of Meshuggah I don’t like. And according to a Meshuggah fan, he isn’t really doing a great job at this either (but the person in question is a vocalist as well, so it might be taste-related). Nevertheless he manages to fill the album with his voice without irritating me, score there, but on the other hand he also never makes me think like ‘hell fucking yeah’, and that’s too bad. So you could say that Robbe K is an improvement for the band, but not the final answer if you ask me. Oh and if you're wondering: there are clean vocals present here and there, performed by guitarist Sjaak Kassies, so it's not an all brutal attack from that section.

 

For the rest I think everyone into polyrhythmic stuff like Textures, Meshuggah and any other mentally challenging band should check this out, you WILL like this. I personally can’t wait to see them live.