Levitation

The Awakening EP

Written by: PP on 12/05/2010 04:05:20

Levitation are a Danish metalcore five piece from Hedehusene, near Roskilde, just a stone's throw away from where our beloved scribe TL lives and goes to university. Useful information, I know, but to compensate here's something that will nail down precisely what they sound like: "The Awakening", their sophomore EP, was recorded in CB Studios. Uh-huh, it's one of those records, one that suffers a great deal from a hollow production job that leaves the disc sounding like it was recorded live in one session, i.e. a typical Danish metal album that's heavy just for the sake of sounding motherfucking heavy.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves, shall we, because the truth is that Levitation have written a couple of slick lead riffs and grabbing clean chorus melodies which have ensured that "The Awakening" isn't a chore to listen to. There's a distinct lean toward melodic metalcore hooks within the lead guitar and the semi-melodic, scratchily sung clean choruses are often supported by scaling guitar melodies for good measure. The band utilizes three different styles in their vocal arsenal: a screamer, who sounds like he could easily fill in for the dude in Pilgrimz, a deep growler typical to many Swedish death metal bands, and I'm not sure which of the two delivers the cleans but these have my mind seeking the name of a famous American metalcore band in vain (help me out in the comments, please?). Combined together, the band's weaponry produces some formidable results, particularly the opening track "The Sharpest Tongue" sounds great with it's melodic guitars during the chorus, and I'm loving the bridge leading into the clean vocal chorus in "Determination" as well.

There are only four tracks on the EP, so there's not that much more to talk about. References are aplenty to other local bands like Fiji, Choriah, and why not also Billy Boy In Poison, plus the obvious influences from the American metalcore scene, which is probably the very reason why Levitation exists in the first place. It's not particularly original or distinct even within the small Danish metalcore scene, but at the same time, at least two out of four tracks here have me headbanging and, frankly, even humming along to the choruses in places. The songwriting sounds like it's about to be in order based on these, so what needs to happen now is that the band needs to get together and lay out clear goals on how exactly they want to sound like before going into the studio next time, so that they will be able to remove the anonymous 'CB Studios Danish Metal' tag from their repertoire to form a signature sound. As it stands now, there's little separating Levitation from the rest of the Danish metal bunch, as promising as this EP may otherwise be.

Download: The Sharpest Tongue, Determination
For the fans of: Pilgrimz, Choriah, Fiji, Billy Boy In Poison
Listen: Myspace

Release date 28.02.2010
Self-Released

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