Comes to Life

I love the band name; Statue… I mean, what can be more static than that? Add the laughable “sword & sorcery” cover and boom… you already have loads of reserves regarding the potential music content. On the other hand, it’s Finland, for crying out loud; it’s got to be something worth hearing. After all, apparently this statue is about to come to life…

and it does alright, half-Golem half-Frankenstein; in other words, expect heavy stiffness, or stiff heaviness to lead the show, the guys nodding in the direction of the Bay-Area but think its more cumbersome, less expressive side (Defiance, above all). It’s by all means professionally executed but somewhat monotonous stuff which rigidly welcomes a few experimental half-thrashy jumpers (“Political Pollution”, “For Your Country”) those trying to win a more volatile territory in a way similar to diversifiers like Death Angel’s “Act III” and Flotsam & Jetsam’s “When the Storm Comes Down”. For those to succeed, though, one needs a really capable melodic singer, but our man behind the mike here exudes no emotion whatsoever, delivering in a rough semi-clean dispassionate baritone the whole time, think Janne Joutsenniemi from the guys’ compatriots Stone.

Just when you’ve thought you’ve figured it all out way before the end, comes the speedy roller-coaster “Believe or Not” to bang even the stiffest heads out there, followed by “Revenge”, an excellent tech-thrasher with overt echoes of Stone again. Once rolling, the stone doesn’t stop, the listener already jumping with joy on the uplifting speedy delight “Easy with Money” before the title-track puts a wide smile on everyone’s face, 2.5-min of superb lashing all-instrumental intricacy, the epitaph to end all epitaphs.

Wow… the finale is an eye-opener in every way, and although it doesn’t exactly compensate for the less exciting first half, it surely brightens the spirits and awakens half the statues around. The latter must have started opening their eyes on the frequent shouty choruses which will remind of Anthrax, the vocalist’s colleagues trying to pour some life into his firmly detached performance. It’s not the most orthodox effort out there this one, especially with this surprisingly very flexible ending, but at the same time it’s not hard to detect this lethargic inertia-induced demeanour, like the band prefer lazing around, or are probably not truly motivated in order to produce a statue… sorry, standout performance…

cause they definitely had what it takes to hit the heights reached by some of their compatriots, not to mention inspiring a handful of fans to build a statue in their honour. It nearly came to life, their repertoire, be it with a hypnotic heavy sound or with a rousing albeit a bit belated set of fireworks.