From the same promotion company (Team All About the Music) that introduced me to the likes of the excellent Journal,  Fallen Martyr, Truth Corroded, Hyno5eand A Band of Orcs comes the second album from Queensland, Australia’s Lynchmada. And while it’s a solid dose of modern metal that combines crunchy thrash and metalcore into one commercially acceptable product, it’s not doing a whole lot for me personally.

With tangible nods to the the modern metal core movement like Killswitch Engage as well as bands like Sevendust, Machine Head, Chimaira and Devildriver (Ive seen reference to Textures, The Deftone and Meshuggah also, but that’s a bit of a creative reach) Lynchmada is all wrapped up and processed for a gateway metal band. They have a certain amount of groove, chunk and heft, gravelly throaty shouted vocals and enough oomph to impress your 13 year old nephew with its metallic chops. However, an abundance of clean vocals, a couple of ballads and a pretty cookie cutter modern metal sound won’t fool more seasoned metal heads.

I’m not trying to be too harsh on Lynchmada as to be honest there is nothing overtly wrong with To the Earth, and I’m not rolling my eyes when one of its songs appear on my ipod. It”s not awful and a certain number of the songs do have a satisfying heft  with a big loud production such as “Throat of Stone”,”Broken Bones” , “Burial Ground” or “Blackout”, but more often than not any burly rumbles and KSE styled melodies (especially notable in “Broken Bones”) are interjected with some pretty unconvincing clean vocals or chorus. Which is a shame because if they had just stepped on the metal pedal a little firmer and with a little more conviction, I think some of those supposed Meshuggah and Textures comparisons could potentially ring a little more true. As the few moments where there isn’t any commercial or clean stuff like “The Earth I Walk” and “White Water Born” hammer along nicely.

But as it stands the album is dragged down by the likes of lengthy ballads “City of Lungs” and “Relic” (which comprise the albums last 15 minutes or so) and the numerous clean choruses in the other songs. Not that ballads or clean vocals are bad as when done right in modern metal (listen to Canada’s Odium) I rather enjoy it, but here the offsetting metal isn’t convincing enough to balance it out.

 

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