I decided to review this self released Italian metalcore effort and the debut, At The Bottom from Canada’s Odium on the same day so you readers could get two slightly different examples of how clean vocals affect the totality of the album.

In the case of Inside Process, their heavier, meatier take on metalcore (a la I Killed the Prom Queen) is an otherwise impressive, burly slab of melodic death metal tinged metal core with a very impressive, beefy guitar tone (courtesy of Emeral Studios) and some gruffer than usual growls and some solid, up tempo songwriting. However, the clean vocals of Alessandro come into play fairly regularly (though not over used), and tend to disrupt things somewhat.

The fact the rest of the material is so sturdy, heavy (for metalcore) and competent, only serves to highlight the ineffective and rather limp wrested clean vocal delivery. Tracks like opener “This Time”, “Sunset of My Hope”, “The Better Way”, “Walk Alone” and the very enjoyable thrash attack of “Through the Threshold” rumble and gallop with ease and confidence and genre requisite elements until the singing starts and I just want to roll my eyes. Penultimate track, “The Rest is Silence” is a needless ambient track before the closing title track rounds things out with an appropriate breakdown but leaves you wandering how much better the album could have been with better clean vocals or no clean vocals at all, because the rest of the elements seem in place for a very promising entry into the metalcore genre.  

Still, Shade the Sun apparently consists of material that is two years old, as the band recently signed to a PR company that’s re-promoting the album. I’ll be interested to see how any new material has progressed or if they remained hamstrung by inadequate clean vocals despite a solid musical base.

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments