Banshee shrieking? Pig squealing? Devil growling? Nay, these are not just ancient forms of communication, but staples of a metal singer (note: screamers) repertoire. As a listener of heavy music, these are the sort of things you come into contact with on a daily basis, so to a certain extent you’re prepared for a rough time from a vocalist and give yourself room to be pleasantly surprised when a particular singers’ roar doesn’t prove to grate on the skin. Louis Thurgood, frontman with Tides of Virtue can do all three of the things mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, but unfortunately none of them amazingly well. Inparticular, his deep growling on album opener Fields of Solitude is just instantly off-putting. This sets the tone for what turns out to be a somewhat frustrating debut; well-executed modern metal with enough thrash, twin leads and breakdowns to satisfy any metallic appetite, but it’s executed without any real sense of identity and ends up providing a fairly bland experience.
Calling music with such passion, power and agression ‘bland’ might seem ridiculous but Tides of Virtue are entering a genre filled with bands that are simply stagnating and offering nothing new to the table. Nothing on Malevolence is bad, but you’ve simply heard it all done before and better by someone else; the vocals, the riffs, the breakdowns, everything. As has been the case over the last decade, the UK metal scene is characterised by bands marking themselves out with an individual sound that truly stands out. As it stands, Tides of Virtue sound like they might have the talent to develop and stand out from the pack, but at the minute they’re some way away from ascending to that level.
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