Album review: Breed 77 – Insects

Ah, Breed 77 – a band I’ve been aware of for years, but have never knowingly listened to before now. You couldn’t open a copy of Kerrang! around the Millennium without seeing someone mentioning how awesome they were… and given that they’re still going now, when many of the nu-metal also-rans of the era have faded into well-deserved obscurity, there must be something to it. Insects is their fifth album, after all.

To these ears, at least, Breed 77’s roots in the last gasp of the nu-metal “revolution” is plain to hear, though Insects is largely devoid of the dumb I’m-so-dysfunctional posing that characterised the genre. Its stylistic melange of metal tropes may not sound like a dispatch from the cutting edge any more, but it manages to combine virtuoso performance with accessibility and adventurous songwriting, as well as using hints of flamenco and Spanish guitar to mark out their own unique little territory… you can draw your own comparison between that and the relation that Breed 77’s home turf of Gibraltar has to the UK, if you like.

So, some hints of sonic originality, at least; Breed 77’s lyrical preoccupations, however, are less than unique. Everything kicks off (after a ticking-clock intro pinched from Pink Floyd via Anthrax) with “Wake Up”, a muscular and energetic call-to-action comprised of staccato chords stabbing out between saturated vocals and solid drumming. Frontman Paul Isola’s voice is reminiscent of a nasal James Hetfield, and the backing vocals are occasionally reminiscent of the less pleasant aspects of nu-metal – clipped call-backs delivered as cave-man grunts – but the musicianship somehow redeems it; Breed 77 rely on a sort of musical bricolage, but they’re more than up to the task of playing it with flair.

In many ways, Insects reminds me of Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime: ambitious, earnest and well-meant, but somehow hollow, like an elegant Moorish mosque with nothing inside it but a bare sand floor and an off-duty muezzin singer smoking bootleg cigarettes. If you’re accustomed to the political underpinnings of classic thrash lyrics – that horrified fascination with the politics of warfare and hatred – this album will provide familiar territory for you to wander. “The Battle Of Hatin” includes familiar warnings: “The governments have all gone mad! [...] It’s the nature of mankind to go to war”. Well, yeah; tell us something we don’t know, man. There’s further ill-defined fist-shaking in the face of The Man all through Insects; we’re supposed to start a revolution right now, apparently, but exactly how or why isn’t abundantly clear. But hey, here’s a blazing guitar solo!

I’m being kind of churlish, here; metal bands aren’t under any obligation to provide answers to our most pressing political and social problems, after all. But I can’t help but poke at this side of the Breed 77 experience, because I get the feeling they could go that extra mile if they tried. Perhaps it’s just a sense of disappointment; Insects is musically impressive, and showcases an emphasis on melody and hooks than a lot of its contemporaries in the virtuoso sphere fail to achieve. I can’t help but feel I’d enjoy it more if the lyrics didn’t sound so hackneyed and cheesy.

But I’m well aware that my obsession with lyrical content is fairly uncommon, so don’t let my whining put you off – if you don’t customarily pay a lot of attention to the words in songs, you’ll probably wonder what I’m bitching about. And there’s a lot of good things about Breed 77’s work here: the Mediterranean flavour is a refreshingly novel touch that provides strong contrast to some beefy riffing and progressive arrangements. I think I’d have probably been even kinder had I switched off before the final track, “Zombie” – a cover of the Cranberries track that was utterly inescapable for the bulk of 1994. The original became a smash hit not just because of its political message but for Dolores O’Riordan’s incredibly distinctive vocal style, but Breed 77’s version ends up sounding like a Metallica tribute band belting out a few extra requests at the end of the night. It’s plainly well-meant, but falls short of its own ambitions… which might be the best way of summing up the whole album.