Mindshift
Horizon
Independent
Release Date: Out Now
Review by Matthew Clewley
Sweden, from my view, seems to be a breeding ground of new metal bands that don’t stop making music and growing a fan base. Melodic death metal has it’s pioneers as well as a superb following across Europe and some parts of the world, with Soilwork, Arch Enemy and Scar Symmetry to name a few that push the genre to extreme levels. Mindshift have had an unsettled past with line up changes until the year 2012 where they finally started to make an impact with No Regrets and then the addition of Mao joining the band on vocals. Since then they have had an impact, and now as they have returned from a tour in India they are ready to make sure you will never forget what they are made of on record and during a live performance.
Horizon started off with Origin, giving us the ambient guitar feel that has been prominently popularized by TesseracT, as this leads in to an eruption of crunching riffs and ear pumping drumming with Arise. Throughout the listen of this album its main focus seems to be the riffs, as they are top class. With songs like The Art and My Revenge (featuring Bjorn Strid from Soilwork) showcasing back breaking breakdowns, and songs like Drowning bringing in some synth work and clean vocals in the middle of the album. The follow on track is one of my favourites; Suffer In Silence is a vicious sounding track that’s got a dark theme to it. A Thousand Scars has a juicy djent tone that sadly isn’t used as technically as I would of imagined, but it’s still a solid track with a very lengthy breakdown.
The album has plenty of variety of playing and styles on it to make it an entertaining listen. Instrumentally this album may not be as technical as you would think, their main influences are Scar Symmetry which is extremely notable in this, but rather than focusing on mind melting solos, they do perfectly fine with the fluid riffs that casually stream through the album. When there are solos it’s a breather, Mao’s a talented vocalist with a fantastic band behind him with the likes of Johan Lund (guitars), Fabbe (bass) and Kim Bengtsson (drums). The synth sounds in songs like Single Session Therapy are a bit too cheesy for my liking as the band sound excellent without them. Mindshift seem to not be getting the attention that they deserve, Horizon is a completely solid album that has raw power to it as it feels to be a exploding combination of cola and Mentos stranded in the middle of a desert…can someone sign these up for fucks sake? Great album.
