Fossils

The Meating EP

Written by: PP on 16/03/2015 23:46:21

The microphone on the artwork for the new Fossils EP "The Meating" is not there by mistake. It is to indicate the first release by the group featuring vocals, the lack of which was a major complaint of mine regarding their debut album "Flesh Hammer" last year. But instead of hiring a permanent vocalist or using one of the two members as a candidate, the band have opted for a plethora of guests to feature on the album ranging from Jacob Bredahl of ex-Hatesphere fame to vocalists of Cola Freaks, Powersolo and many others on the seven tracks of the record. Each of whom do their part to varying degrees of success.

To start out with, the thick bass grooves and rhythmic percussion was always one of those things that worked really well live, but wasn't all that interesting on record for Fossils. The same tapped leads and crushingly heavy bass vibrations in the vein of Kyuss and Pelican records are still present in the mix, only this time juxtaposed against vocals and functioning less as the focal point of the record rather than as a backing element this time around. Opener "Deadringer" is promising with the hardcore style barks of Jacob Bredahl demonstrating how Fossils could sound like as a hardcore band, but for example "Ködhabit" is frankly terrible with Powersolo's main man Kim Kix bringing an undesired element of pretentious hipster experimentalism to the Fossils sound.

At the same time, "Speedbacon" provides a contrasting highlight with Seb Doubinski on the vocals, which basically sounds like Suicidal Tendencies or perhaps even Body Count on their new album from last year. Still, on track two, "Taxon", Ultimate Combat Noise contributes with dissonant guitar screeching and crackling sounds that do the song absolutely no favours. If you don't get a mild headache from listening to this song, there's likely something wrong with you. Sadly, the high-pitch screeching hides all the decent bass melodies underneath it in a song that could otherwise have been good. "Ridge And The Rock" showcases female vocals courtesy of Marie Højlund, which follow the same melody line as Iron Maiden's "Run To The Hills", if said song was originally written by a gothic metal band instead.

Basically, what I'm getting at here is that Fossils have squandered an opportunity to showcase just what kind of potential their music might have with a proper vocalist in front of them by having basically only one halfway decent performance laid on top of their signature bass lines. The vast majority of vocals are far too experimental, fucked up, or weird to make any sense on the record, with Bredahl's performance being the rare exception although his one-dimensional bark was never particularly characteristic in the first place. It would've been interesting to see the same with a single, more capable vocalist throughout all seven songs to figure out whether this is something to explore further in the future. For now, the experimentalist approach taken is too much and honestly does no good for my impression of Fossils on record.

Download: Deadringer, Speedbacon
For the fans of: Kyuss, Pelican, CKY, Russian Circles
Listen: Facebook

Release date 03.03.2015
Indisciplinarian

Related Items | How we score?
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

Legal

© Copyright MMXXIV Rockfreaks.net.