(Andy Synn collides with the new album from Cobra the Impaler, out Friday on Listenable Records)
Greetings all!
Today I’m writing to you from the airport lounge at the Baltimore/Washington International airport, having just spent the last few days enjoying the sights and sounds (well, mostly the sounds) of another fantastic edition of Maryland Deathfest.
This has nothing to do with the subject of today’s review, however, it just felt like something worth mentioning as I/we get back into the regular swing of things here at NCS this week.
Anyway… last time we checked in with Belgian Prog-Metal types Cobra the Impaler I was lavishing praise upon their debut album, Colossal Gods, and describing it as a strikingly melodic, multifaceted mix of Mastodon, Alice in Chains, and Byzantine.
But, as DGR recently pointed out to me – and which their upcoming new album, Karma Collision, has only reinforced – it turns out I was ever so slightly off-base with one of those comparisons.
To clarify, there’s still a lot of both Alice in Chains and Mastodon in the band’s sound (the vocal harmonies in early stand-out “Season of the Savage”, for example, could easily give Staley/Cantrell/Duvall a run for their money, while the blend of hypnotic hooks and punchy/proggy riffage which forms the backbone of the title-track could easily have been drawn straight from the latter band’s post Crack the Skye period).
But, this time around at least, the album’s more aggressive moments (such as the dynamic, riff-driven verses of “Magnetic Hex” and the thrashed up second half of “My Inferno”) put me much more in mind of early 2000s Metalcore stalwarts God Forbid at their best.
And while I’m sure that some folks will have reacted badly to the simple mention of the much-maligned “M-word”, in this case it’s definitely meant as a compliment, as while God Forbid never quite broke out in the way some of their bigger and/or more notorious peers ever did, they certainly had their moments, and often felt like they were always just on the cusp of making something truly great.
Which is precisely where Cobra the Impaler find themselves now, too.
Now, to be clear, they’re not quite there yet either, especially since Karma Collision would probably benefit from a little more editing and afterthought here and there – “Eye of the Storm” is largely superfluous, “The Message” reaches a little too far into the bag of familiar Metalcore tricks, and “The Fountain” proves that sometimes you can have a little too much of a good thing – but they have the potential, that much is certain, to make something truly special.
That being said, Karma Collision already has its fair share of special moments – several of which I’ve already highlighted – so I don’t want you to come away from this review thinking I’ve sold the band short, especially when you consider that the climactic pairing of “Assassins of the Vision” and “Shifting Sands” both make fantastic use of their respective extended run-times to explore the band’s impressively progressive proclivities and their increasingly aggressive attitude in an even more fluid and organic fashion, while also pushing their talent for cleverly crafted hooks and harmonies even further too.
So now is the time to jump on the Cobra the Impaler bandwagon, if you haven’t done so already, because I don’t doubt that this album will lead to even bigger and better things for them in the future!