| CD REVIEW Visitor |
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Band : Visitor Oh goodness, don't mistake this Metalcore band for the London based “Electronic Rock” act by the same name which released its debut single on Vulture Music, and is currently working towards the release of its debut full-length! If anything, this band from Manchester has precedence on that other Pop band. I mean, I've no idea when exactly lead singer/ guitarist Jim Foster and drummer/ second singer Tim Marland exactly founded this Visitor, but they released their debut demo The Tru-Metal Revolution out in 2002. True, this is only the debut official mini-album by the Manchester quartet (consisting also of backing singer/ guitarist Garry Hayden and bassist Mitch), but besides their debut demo they already released a two-track single and 6-track EP titled The Arrival (the first with two songs off the EP) in 2003, the full-length Paranormality in 2004, and the 5-track Cursed EP in 2006. If that don't take precedence, I don't know what will! Funny thing, the band's old logo (alien visitation thing) looks so familiar to me, I believe I might actually have one of the older releases in my possession. Founded with the intent to bring a different and unique sound and poser to Metal, Visitor confesses to harness such modern and classic influences as Pantera, Sepultura, Judas Priest, Machine Head, Killswitch Engage, and Fear Factory in its music, but I'm sure it's the band's unique 3-way vocal approach which will catch first listeners immediately. Sure, the twin lead guitar parts will blow away live audiences by its sheer power and melody, and in fact has frequently made plenty of headlining acts feel pretty lame. Luckily, some of the better bands in the established music business have felt the power of the band, and thus Visitor has in the past shared stages with the likes of Napalm Death, VOD, Raging Speedhorn, I-Def-I, and recently (March of last) played at Belgium's Wizzfest, where they got a very warm reception indeed (the band even already got an invite to return next year). Stylistically, what you get from Visitor is a nice type of modern Metal incorporating melodic elements from Thrash and Death Metal, with some Hardcore flavourings from the harsher vocals. What with quite some clean vocals in there as well, the end result resembles very much what is currently typified under the categories NWoUSM and US Metalcore. The twin guitar runs are relentless, as is the vocal delivery, because even when there's clean singing backed by clean backings (alternately you'll have the harsher-styled near-grunts and Hardcore screams backed by a like-wize singer), the effort is done at the top of voice capacity, with soaring effect. I'm afraid I cannot tell you whether there's music at the band's MySpace page, because the network pc I do my Internet surfing on doesn't allow me to get onto that recently up-graded site...and the band's own website (www.) visitormusic.com, immediately re-directs to their MySpace. So, check it out for yourselves. If the songs “458” and/or “9 Circles Of Hell” are posted, please note that the short bits of added atmospheric keyboards are only present on these songs. I dó hope their video to the EP's opening track “Face Of Fear” is on there, because the clean chorus vocals on that one are simply to-die-for! 90/100 Tony. |