![One-Way Mirror - [self-titled]](http://www.rock-metal-music-reviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/one-way-mirror-self-titled.jpg "One-Way Mirror - [self-titled]")
Another metal super-group rears its head; One-Way Mirror features members of Soilwork, Mnemic, Scarve and Lyzanxia, and this eponymous first album sees them all stepping toward a slightly more approachable format than the metal they traditionally make.
Approachable is a matter of degree, of course; One-Way Mirror is still pretty sturdy stuff, but it mixes chunky grinding riffola with the epic chorus architecture that we’re more accustomed to hearing from the post-hardcore outfits. Throw in a production style that gives the whole thing a kind of pseudo-industrial flavour – lots of gated percussion fills and chopped chords, for example – and we’ve got a sound which, while it may not be brand spanking new, occupies a currently unpopulated place on the spectrum between heaviness and listenability.
Make no mistakes, though, One-Way Mirror is a heavy album; the sound is massive, with thick tones jostling close to one another, vying for attention but never quite crowding one another out. The guitars and bass sound realistic and in-your-face, and the amped-up approach lends the whole album a powerful sense of ebb and flow as the compression pumps the mix around. Right from the opening riff of “Destination Device”, sliced up into a staccato pattern that sounds halfway between guitar and sample, One-Way Mirror promises rhythmic energy and rarely fails to deliver.
One-Way Mirror’s songwriting has more than a touch of the kitchen-sink approach about it, a collage of ideas culled from the last two decades of heavy music and smashed together violently, like making experimental sculptures by crashing cars into one another at high speeds. The overall impression is of a metalcore band with an uncanny ear for great hooks combined with a producer who thinks Filter were the greatest band ever to walk the face of the planet. But drill down to a song-by-song level, and there’s a lot of different influences being thrown into the blender.
For example, the squelching synthesizer riff that bubbles its way into the intro of “As You Are Now” is a definite nod toward industrial styles, as is the frequent use of compressed-bandwidth “sung through a cellphone” vocal treatments. Head over to the snare-propelled “Danger Calling”, and you’ll find a bridge riff that’s straight out of the thrasher’s playbook acting as the harbinger for a Kerry King-style shredder solo; elsewhere, “Empty Spaces” verges on Euro-rock with its over-earnest vocal parts, while “Deprived Of Connections” is strangely reminscent of the classic nu-metal breakout hit format, with muttered schizoid verses and shout-along choruses.
Guillaume Bideau’s vocals swing between throat-torn howls and almost-emo melodics, and it’s actually the latter that shine the most, despite the rather pedestrian lyrical content. One-Way Mirror have got a good balance established between the light and dark components of their sound, and there are some chord progressions lurking in the undergrowth that could cause some serious bother on the right radio stations – although the track most likely to make its way into the wider consciousness of the world is the sore-thumb (but fairly passable) cover of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax”. No, seriously. I found myself wondering if they are fully aware of what that song’s actually about … not the usual choice for a metal band, for sure.
But aside from that particular eighties anthem, One-Way Mirror has a disappointingly uniform sound over all. At the moment, they’re a bit of a one-trick pony, and - even though it’s a trick they do very well and that hasn’t been tried for a while - they’d have benefited from more variety across an album-length project. If all you can do is recycle two or three song formulas over and over again, you might as well just be a heavier Linkin Park, and hell knows we don’t need that right now.
That said, One-Way Mirror is still a pretty strong collection on the merits of its up-front sound and melodic suss, and a satisfying compromise between heaviness and hooks. Well worth checking out.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: industrial, metal, metalcore, One-Way Mirror, rock
