The strangely named Bewized are a metal band from Greece who play an oddly enjoyable form of groove laden thrash/metalcore. Granted it sounds like it comes from the late ’90s/early two thousand and at times has a Nu metal feel to it, but thanks to a very big, chunky production, some catchy songs and a stern drum performance, The Scorch of Rage shows some promise.

Throughout listening to the album, numerous influences jumped in and out of my mental notes; Tear From the Red era Poison the Well, latter Gorefest, Machine Head, Skinlab, Boiler, Staind, Stompbox,  Element Eighty, just to name a few. And while this analogous mix of elements seems a bit iffy on paper, as well as slightly dated, with some increased heft and groove, the quartet manage to pull it off.

After the intro “Prelude to Reign” you get a pretty good glimpse of Bewized‘s overall tone as “Laceration of Innocence” lumbers into view with a beefy double bass and a pretty nice mid-song groove and solo. But with the good comes the bad, as the curse of the clean vocals rears its ugly head. Paschalis Theotokis has an otherwise impressive bellow that borders on death metal, but his clean vocals leave a little to be desired. I’ve heard worse, but his more baritone, heavily accented croon is just a bit off and far from other top notch clean metalcore voices, as heard in the likes of Odium and Across the Sun. The cleans are not a deal breaker, as they are not used a ton, but when they do kick in, I cringe just a little bit (i.e. ballad “Redeemer”).

Otherwise though, the release is solid. As I mentioned, The Noise Factory Studio production is beefy as heck, with a Nice Tue Madsen -ish chunk to it and drummer Kostis Tatsis has a steady, train on a tracks presence about his performance. In spite of the clean vocals, tracks like the aforementioned opener  “Sober”, “Cages into Cages”, “Conjure”, “Cyanide Blood” and “For This I Swear” often provide a thunderous, catchy and slightly commercial  sidebar to my usual listening choices without being full on commercial or pure Nu metal as there is just enough ‘real’ metal gruffness to keep things respectable.

 

[Visit the band's website]

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