Albums

Album Review: Textures

Album: Silhouettes
Label: Listenable

I didn’t quite know what to expect from Textures before I listened to their third full length, ‘Silhouettes’. Not wanting to risk diving into the album with raised expectations or a sense of dread, I put the CD on before I went through the process of checking out who these guys are.

What immediately comes across from opening track ‘Old Days Born Anew’ is a sound that seems a mish-mash of Meshuggah, Lamb of God and a focus on melodic choruses that is akin to Devil Sold His Soul. A growling bark overrules the rhythmic riffs of the guitars as way back in the mix a set of drums are somewhere having the shit beaten out of them.

There’s a rough balance of a focus on the heavy, pulsating guitar work that defines the metal genre (read “chugga chugga chugga chugga chuuuug”) and parts where the vocalist, who I later found out was called Eric Kalsbeek, adapts that roar to something a bit more palatable, a sound which soars over the underlying current of guitars and drums.

Of course, this is a tradition that has been carried out by countless bands of the metalcore stable – as much as I hate to place bands in categories, it’s very easy to see Textures fitting comfortably next to the likes of SikTh and Gojira.

In fact, after listening to the album and looking at the band’s self-written biography I wasn’t surprised to find they refer to their new album as a “long anticipated masterpiece of diversity and ingenuity”. With an attitude like that, you’d have to be under the impression they were setting some pretty high expectations of their own, and I’m afraid Silhouettes doesn’t really live up to their self-praise. The album is listenable to, and certainly not completely abhorrent, but it still sounds too much like what is already out there, and it doesn’t stand up to other examples of the genre.

I think the important thing here is, like me, to not expect too much. Silhouettes is a fairly mediocre release that plays it safe by keeping to the tried and tested rules that have been established for years by other metal/metalcore/math-metal, etc., etc. bands. If you’re craving something which is vaguely different from your Killswitches and the like, then you can’t go wrong picking this up, but if you were hoping for a fresh take on things then look elsewhere.

For fans of: Killswitch Engage, SikTh, Lamb of God
Band links = Textures

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Tags: album, cd, Textures, Silhouettes, review

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