THIS. IS. METAL.
Whenever you need a pure rush of metalcore into your brains, then I suggest you give Metal Safari a try. Excusing the lame name, Metal Safari is pure, brute metal with that finesse in the guitars that keeps me there listening to the whole song. Unlike grindcore crap band Amputated Genitals, the vocalist’s voice is audible even if you don’t have any idea what he’s saying. It’s not down in the dumps sounding like the bass drum (which by the way you get a nice shot of in the PV). And the guitars have a melody, and you can argue that Geriatric Blood Storm has a melody too, but it’s not completely lost in that mess of distortion.
I wish that the vocalist would sing just a little more, but it’s alright. For some reason, his voice doesn’t irk me. I TRIED not to like HELL’S BLAST. I really did. But for some reason, when this song was playing a smile cracked over my face. I’ve fallen into softer music lately but this song brought me back to the metal side. I don’t know what happened to me but HELL’S BLAST smacked me like a little bitch and said “headbang”.
Well I didn’t completely obey so I could blog about it but you get the point. The guitars are nice and polished and the beginning with the guitar and bass mixing thing was what got me started. If this were an instrumental, it would kick ass. The vocalist might put some people off that insist that they need digitized “singing” in order to enjoy a song (which is why metalcore and rock in general is an acquired taste, and bands like Genitals don’t do it justice). The ending was weak though in my opinion; they either should have busted out another riff or cut it short, but playing that riff over and over again for a half-a-minute overdid it.
The PV…..looked cheap. It looks like something I would do. The shots of WTF are really WTF at it’s purest and then there were just random people in there headbanging. I wondered what they were trying to achieve and two minutes in I quit and said they were going for nothing but energy and stereotypical rick-induced craziness. It seems to fit, but it comes off as weak. Really weak.
But their indies, and they probably only had a 500 yen spending limit, so I could see why they would throw in random shit to fill up time. Damn, I haven’t seen a music video this cheap since Unknown…Despair….a Lost. I guess they couldn’t afford to have the vocalist sync with the actual music.
But let’s keep everything in perspective; Metal Safari may be good, but they’re not excellent. HELL’S BLAST tells you why. The band has some promise, but they need to develop their own style instead of playing the same style other, more accomplished bands have played. There isn’t anything in the song HELL’S BLAST that comes off as distinctly “Metal Safari”. I can listen to a MTH song and say “This is definitely MTH”. I could listen to a Dir en grey song and say “This is Diru”. Listening to HELL’S BLAST, it just sounds like generic metalcore done right.
Which is why I leave this song with a 3.5/5.
Recent Comments