LP REVIEW
LOWDOWN
1.
UNKNOWN
2.
INTENZ
Length: 55:24 (min:secs)
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This five-piece metal band called Lowdown come from Stavanger in Norway and released this, their self-produced debut album during the summer of 2003 on Black Balloon Records. Despite being Norwegian they don’t actually play death metal which so many of their countrymen choose to do - they are certainly a metal band but follow a more modern metal route. From the painted faces to the heavy, downtuned, thundering music and savaging vocals, this is full-on, intense and bludgeoning metal. The album opens with “Unknown”, it is no-nonsense metal in the Slipknot / Mudvayne mould, a style that continues with “Intenz” - which is intense - featuring rapid-fire drums and very much in a Mudvayne style. Then there’s echo’s of Pantera and Machine Head in “Sixxth”, a strong influence that occurs throughout the album but is peppered with others such as Botch and Mushuggah during “Breakdown” and “Take A Minute”. There’s also a slightly softer side with “Finding Truth” being the most melodic - including the vocals - and “Take A Minute” which has a sweet guitar solo and plenty of melody. They certainly wear their influences on their sleeves! This is a very heavy album, a metallic combination of old-school thrash and nu-school metal with a very slight flavour of traditional metal (in a Judas Priest sort of way) and features big songs with pounding drums throughout. The main issues would be that there’s not enough variety of pace and maybe it’s too full-on all of the time, which diminishes the effect of the heaviness over the 55 minutes of the album. Having said that, it’s nothing major, in fact may be a positive to some and there will undoubtedly be plenty that will simply enjoy this for what it is - a brutal display of modern metal.
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- Rigsby
(11h January, 2004) |
