Terraformer

Knut have a very common problem; they're an adequate enough band, instruments are competent, vocalist has a decent shout about him blah blah, the problem being that the kind of music they play is in a completely terrible genre. Most people would've heard this kind of stuff somewhere before, that mix between slower metal and hardcore that isn't slow enough to be all awesome and doomy, and isn't fast enough to make the hardcore-ish parts worth it.

In short it's a boring piece of sludgy metalcore or whatever you want to call it. Perhaps Knut realise this and have tried spicing it up a bit; there's some glitch little bits of ambient, some noise soaked clean sections, a bunch of samples. This falls well short, however; a few semi-interesting bits don't make the main bits of the album anymore interesting, and honestly it's just really sleep inducing. I guess some music description is required; it's a boring take on sludge sped up a bit, or it's a boring take on hardcore slowed down a bit. It kind of reminds me of Cult of Luna's more mid-volume parts, but whereas CoL stuff there songs full of otherwise interesting clean builds and effects laden freakouts this just sits at that same sort of nothing-volume. It's not really dynamic which would be ok if it was ridiculously loud or quiet, but as it stands it's just there. Not inspiring you to bang your head, not tripping you out, just being straight out irritating. Put it this way, you know you're in some trouble when your ambient outro is the best thing about your album. I was hoping 'Fibonacci Unfolds' would be in a series of time signatures relating to that pattern but alas it's not to be, as it stands though it's some rather solid drone that's not terribly amazing but still pretty sweet in it's slow moving, spacey sounds.

It's just a really unremarkable album. Could be worse, I s'pose, the guitars play some unique (if not terribly interesting) riffs that I guess deserves some credit, the bass likewise, and the production captures some good tones and is a rather solid job all round. Of course, decent production doesn't hide the fact that the songs are more boring then watching your cutlery rust.