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Coldsteel > Bracing the Fall > Reviews > Napero
Coldsteel - Bracing the Fall

Five years too late, doing the wrong thing - 46%

Napero, February 8th, 2009

Cold Steel must be a band that missed the train in the 80s, and was forced to take the next one in the early 90s. There's relatively little information available on the band, and it's not a surprise. If this little EP is anything to judge by, they do not offer anything revolutionary or even very interesting, and fading into oblivion has probably been the fate of hundreds of such bands. The "post-80s" atmosphere on Bracing the Fall is almost suffocating, and while most of the good thrash in the world was indeed recorded during that neon-coloured plastic decade, most of the good thrash certainly didn't sound like this.

Cold Steel owes much to other somewhat borderline bands. It's easy to hear the influence of Mordred, sans the actual funk, for example, and perhaps even some early Faith No More-ish songwriting is evident. What is worse, the lamentable infusion of ideas taken from rock from half a decade earlier times has done its damage as well. The metalness on Bracing the Fall is bordering on questionable for 3/4 of the duration, with only the last track, "The Worst Is Yet to Come", clearly falling into the thrash zone, albeit in a watered-down, melodic form. The rest is so 80s, down to the last production tricks in the echoes of the acoustic guitar intros and the way the songs have elements of 80s rock in them along with the almost-funky guitars glued to the choruses. The clean vocal style was supposed to die out in the 80s, but the last of the Mohicans has obviously escaped the pruning late in the decade, and showers us with the part whiny, part wailing singing. There's something from 80s poprock in the voice, and while putting a finger on it is difficult, it turns a bit irritating surprisingly quickly.

The songs themselves have barely enough metal riffing to justify the band's inclusion in the MA, but their construction, the melodies, and the choruses have a very poppish finish on them. This is perhaps what the wannabe Faith No Mores of the world did when they lacked the innovation to walk their own paths. Cold Steel either tries to topple the borders between metal and the rest of 80s music, or they simply wander around on the patchy field of genres without a compass, not really knowing what they want to do. Perhaps this is one of the directions metal could have taken? How fortunate are we! Metal didn't go this way after all...

The musicianship is fine enough, and the music has been professionally executed, but when the starting point reeks of insufficient songwriting, even the most skilled band can't hope to turn pig iron into gold. The production is fine, if obsolecent in its endearing old-fashioned humongous-shoulder-pad-flashback-inducing original-Miami-Vice-like uncharismatic aging.

The aftertaste Bracing the Fall leaves is like a cup of watery coffee. There's nowhere near enough metallic aggression/caffeine to kick the ass of the listener, and it does not turn into a different bewerage, no matter how hard the band would like it to be something essentially different; a pot of coffee does not turn into a cup of rooibos if you fail to fill the percolator as instructed and leave half of the coffee out. The EP is lackluster, rather passionless and indifferent itself, and can't really hope to energize the audience any more than what it itself achieves.

To put it bluntly, the cover of the EP suits the music pretty much perfectly. Take a look and draw your own conclusions.