Innergate

Hoo, boy. This one’s a toughie to review. First off, imagine Warrel Dane as a chick…

Okay, that’s a solid ‘my bad’. Next round of brain bleach is on me, friends.

Now, take a listen to InnerGate by InnerGate. Sound familiar? It should, because to me it sounds suspiciously like Croatia’s knee-jerk answer to Dead Heart, in a Dead World. Looking past the vaginal symbolism of both the band name and the album art on this self-title, the Nevermore parallels are obvious and striking – the uniquely, subversively discordant, modern-metallic blend of prog-power and post-thrash influences which serves as that band’s trademark is on full display here. The twist in the equation is that the vocalist is a woman, Marijana Varga. Oddly enough, though, her vocals suit this style of music somewhat better than Dane’s tend to do.

Nevermore never really did that much for me (in spite of my professed liking for bands which tend to play out on the thrashier edge of power metal – Rage, Angel Dust, Tad Morose, Crimson Cult and the like), but I don’t have the sort of allergic reaction several reviewers on this site (Empyreal, for example) tend to have to their music. It never struck me as actively bad, but Nevermore’s caustic, abrasive and arrhythmic take on how metal should sound was a bit much to handle, and it always struck me that they were always too willing to make the trade-off of actual momentum and sensible progressions for heaviness for heaviness’ sake and weirdness for weirdness’ sake. The same logic applies to this review, of course, since InnerGate adopts a very similar approach, but the album does have its share of saving graces aside from the vocals.

But the vocals are a saving grace, make no mistake about it. Marijana Varga does bring quite a bit of conviction to her singing, which is always a plus, and her range is absolutely enviable. She can do a low, psychotically lulling croon, or she can reach into the stratosphere with unfettered wails – sometimes doing both in the same song (‘Game of Your Mind’ comes to mind as a prime example of both). Between that, she is capable of contorting her vocal cords into harsh, throaty notes or disconcerting the listener with deceptive sweetness and pure pitch. Merely from a singing perspective, Varga puts a lot of herself out there on this album, and the result is often awe-inspiring.

The instrumentation, as well, takes an almost playful, genuinely-progressive (as on ‘Buried Alive’) approach to the Nevermore playbook in some places, whether it is to subvert expectations with clean-toned (even acoustic, as on ‘The Sign’ and ‘Karma to Burn’ with its uptempo Latinate opening and occasional accompaniment) guitarwork, or to break into downright traditional power-metal solos (‘Symbiosis’). For the most part, though, they keep to a grinding, heavy and disorienting phrasing. Again, I don’t actively dislike this sort of playing, but since it doesn’t really tend to go anywhere, one song tends to sound too much like the next, and I tend to notice the deviations from the style more than the dynamics of the style itself. Thus, when it comes to mentioning high and low points of the album, I’m somewhat at a loss. ‘Borderline’, ‘The Sign’, ‘Unsatisfied’, ‘Karma to Burn’ are all noteworthy tracks, but only because they tend to break the mold.

The production on this album is clean and crisp as one could like, which is an absolute blessing when it comes to appreciating the vocals (which in this instance are more often than not the sole selling-point of the music). It’s a shame that they’ve adopted so many of the limitations of their chosen influence, when it is clear that they have an enormous degree of versatility and talent to spare. If they can throw us a few more curveballs like ‘Karma to Burn’ and ‘Unsatisfied’ on their next album, InnerGate could very well be a band to watch.

13 / 20