Band: Nex
Title: Nex (re-issue) / A Clockwork Heart
Label: Rising Records
Distribution: Gordeon Music Promotion
Release date: 26/09/2008
Review: CD

Nex are a band from Huddersfield, UK, that isn’t easy to label to one musical style or another. Their mixture of Rock, Punk, Progressive, Metalcore, Metal, Funk and so on is very complex and the difficulty is to catch the whole concept from time to time. Anyway, Rising Records now releases the new album, A Clockwork Heart (50:22), and re-issues the self-called debut (39:35).
Nex was originally recorded in 2002 at the New Rising Studio by Mark Daghorn. The album opens with a Metalcore-oriented track, combining Thrash-riffs with a melodic and groovy rhythm and both clean vocals and grunts, clean duo-vocals and a few punkish yells. The song is full of tempo- and melody-changes and eccentric riffs, and indeed, this goes for every single track on the album  even though the vocals are mainly ‘melodic’. A pretty evident comparison is Faith No More, yet also bands as System Of A Dawn, Primus and Mr. Bungle come to mind. The mélange of crossover, punkish, groovy, progressive, funky, funny, and rocking elements is totally mad, and yes, humour is of importance here (like in omg).

A Clockwork Heart was also recorded, after the recruitment of a fifth band member, Danny Hamer, by Mark Daghorn, who did work, in mean time, with bands as Trigger The Bloodshed, Open The Skies, Soundshok and Early Grave too, and mixed by Chris Sheldon, known from his work with bands as Radiohead and Foo Fighters. This concept-album is inspired by Danny Elfman and goes on in the vein of the nameless debut album. But the first thing that strikes me, is the professional evolution Nex did undergo musically. All right, in half a decade, progression may not be that strange. But it is clear that the songs are much stronger, better-thought, more convincing. The Faith No More-influences still are strongly present, and still the band makes use of elements from different styles. But this time the whole also sounds more ‘Metal’ at the one hand, and much more professional and mature on the other, in comparison to the debut. Besides Faith No More and System Of A Dawn, this album also seems to be inspired by Coheed And Cambria or Avenged Sevenfold (so says guitar player / vocalist Chris K.). I guess that might be true, but Nex go much further than just the combination of those bands. A few tracks are pretty flat and much ‘easier’, and that’s a shame. Nevertheless, A Clockwork Heart is some sort of Metal hymn for the weird, experimental minds among us.

CD 1: 69/100
CD 2: 81/100

Ivan Tibos.