| CD REVIEW Noyalty |
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Band : Noyalty This band from the South of Holland (Eindhoven area, I understand) was started late Summer 2005, and the quintet’s been getting a nice reputation in the Emo, Hardcore, and Punk Rock scenes. Well, admittingly the band’s gone through some growing stages, starting out playing Skate & Pop Punk. Only a couple of months later second guitarist Joris added, and all of the sudden Noyalty’s music started to blend elements of technical and intense Emocore with fast melodic Punk Rock, while not forgetting to also include the necessary easier and slower melodic structures in the whole. In October of the same year the band also added second lead singer Daniel Calder to the line-up, a completely new set of songs was written, and halfway November the new line-up had its frantic debut gig (the excited/ exciting shows have since become the band’s trademark) in Eindhoven. Somewhere in early 2006 the band released a demo titled Hold Your Breath, but already in September they were writing new songs for a full-length. Even though the band at that moment had only been playing for about a year, they had nevertheless made themselves a reputation and were beginning to draw a decent audience at their hometown shows, some of which were played supporting the likes of The Maple Room, Backfire!, Liar, and The Apers (to name but a few). There wére some contacts with record labels, but eventually the band released Between The Broken on their own, burned on a cd-R with photocopied cover, in early 2007. The album got good reviews in national and international media, and with an increasing amount of gigs the band established itself as a force to be reckoned with, the band started playing small tours to Germany, France, Austria, and Belgium, while continuing to play seperate gigs and supporting the likes of De Heideroosjes, No Turning Back, Born From Pain, and Destine (all from holland), UK bands The Blackout and Dead Swans, French act Straighten Things Out, Australia’s Carpathian, Canada’s This Is A Standoff, and America’s Parkway Drive, Death By Stereo, New Found Glory, Anti-Flag, Bane, This Is Hell, H20, Bayside, Ruiner, Killing The Dream, and Aiden (plus many, many more…but these are the more significant ones). AS you can see, a somewhat diverse lot! Along the way a few minor changes happened to the band’s line-up, as Daniel is now the only singer in the band. Then Joris announced he would be leaving the country for a while (going to Thailand/ Australia from January to August 2010), but the band found a perfect fall-in guy in Jasper from Wasting Bullets pretty soon. By then the album had already been recorded, and with an announced mastering by none less than the famed Alan Douches, the band was calling out to labels to make contact as far back as early November ’09. A call to which Funtime aswered, signing the band in mid February. The album came out a good week before Belgian festival Groezrock 2010, but the band had apparently already known to impress the organizers to the point of allowing ‘em to play the MacBeth stage…twice! Of course, they had a good reason to, because Noyalty’s fast-paced Hardcore is a very dynamic one with great lead guitar play and nevertheless the necessary breakdowns (sometimes taking dead-stops before starting up again). What with Daniel now being the only singer, the vocals are geared completely towards the screamed type and this, in combination with the volatile music, makes for a general gearing of the music away from Emo, and more towards Metalcore…or rather something in between. Check it out at myspace.com/noyalty, where the band posted 3 tracks off each of their albums. People with only a little bit of imagination will certainly be able to imagine how fierce thiss band’s shows must be. Check out the band in live action if your can (they, along with The Maple Room and many others, will be playing the Funtime Fest on October 2, later this year). Additional point of interest: Shai Hulud’s Geert van der Velde joined in a vocal guest performance on the album’s title track. “Regret And Anger Consume Us All” starts off somewhat differently with a 40-second spoken word passage (a guy bitching about…well, just check it out) underneath the music! And album closer “Acceptance” (gee guys…is there like a conceptual idea behind the album, perhaps?) is rather a short atmospheric piece with the singer shout-screaming something unintelligible in the background. Thanks to the 10 songs only lasting a good 22 ½ minutes, I was at least able to listen to the album a couple more times while gathering the info for and making this reviews…but I wish I had more time to listen to the album, because this is really great stuff! 90/100 Tony. |