Sunday, December 4, 2011

HELMUT - XI IX XI CD review


HELMUT - XI IX XI CD
Heimathome Records
Genre: Sludge and a whole lot more
Rating: 3/5

I was never one for experimenting with something that's traditionally good. With food that's fairly easy to keep things strict to your personal tastes. As far as music goes that's a completely different matter. Many bands have been to the edge and back knowing that there's no more room to spread out upon on the template so they stick to what works. Others have gone over the edge usually holding on with one hand still clutching the thing they started as but went to far off the template. And then there are bands like this five piece act from Switzerland. HELMUT didn't go over the edge looking for new musical horizons. Instead they just saw all that they liked on the plate and ate it up to produce an eclectic mis-mash of Sludge Rock, Groove and progressive song structures. You can't call them kitchen sink metal because they're still at the buffet table sampling whatever they can find. I'm sure you can say they take some influences from certain US bands like MASTODON as far as the Prog and Sludge factor goes. The groove also could come from listening to a bevy of more famous NOLA acts. There's plenty of inventive soloing as if this was jazz, song structures dance around at a pace that keeps everything interesting. Vocals do mix clean singing with death growls. At times some songs sound a little too clean and radio friendly. Be that as it may if they're shooting for the big time, as evident who their influences are, then they're not far from it. Not my thing but you now there's a huge crowd out there who go apeshit over this kinda stuff, for now at least.


Label: http://heimathomerecords.com/

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