The Great White Beyond

It takes about twenty seconds to see how much One Inch Giant have improved from their remarkably boring debut. The Sea Opened Up has more good riffs than the entire debut album, the production is more defined while also being significantly rawer, and the vocals have improved markedly. Everything is far better, simply put; there's increased viciousness, the riffs are about 100x catchier, the lyrics less stupid (granted, that's not a very impressive feat).

Overall, except for a few pretty lame moments (Jiraiya is an awful interlude, and the blasts of "Only Scorn Remains" are really ill-fitting) this isn't that bad at all, and I think I can confidently say that it's just not really my style of music; as opposed to it being just flat-out, objectively awful like their debut. I've never been in Sweden but if there's similarity to Finnish popular music I'd say that this is basically their version of radio rock. There's definitely a fair bit of metal in here but it's matched by a large amount of stuff like Muse, certainly in the vocal approach, songs like "The Years of Mist" make newer Katatonia sound like early Darkthrone in comparison.

Yeah, stuff like Katatonia, Sentenced, I guess maybe a more rocky Anathema, that's what this brings to mind, with the occasional nod to slightly less wussier stuff, Black Album type passages and the like. There's a surprising amount of pretty catchy riffs here but a lot of 'em are rock-based deals (with maybe a few Mastodon-ish arpeggios thrown around), and everything is in service to the solid, soaring vocals that remind me of a much more powerful Josh Homme. Everything's been "crafted" very carefully. It's straight out pop-music with surprisingly visceral guitars.

It certainly isn't bad but if I want good pop there's a lot of other avenues I'd rather seek as it's not as catchy as perhaps it needs to be. Likewise, if I want riffs, there's other bands that do it better. But this certainly isn't bad, and yeah, if stuff like new Katatonia, Sentenced etc. excites you then go give this a look-see, you may enjoy it a fair amount.