SYBREED – “The Pulse of Awakening”

European industrial metal with all its faults

The big Larry King gives a piece of advice in his book that we should try to be honest and not pretend to be more knowing than we are. So I will admit that what led me to this album wasn’t my total knowledge of the metal scene, but rather its cool artwork combined with absolute boredom. With my luck though, I stumbled across a band that covers Killing Joke and whose own songs aren’t that bad either.

Sybreed are from Geneva, Switzerland and this is their third full length album. Their style is a combination between melodic death metal and more industrial moments with either one of those two faces takes the lead at certain times. Think Fear Factory and Mnemic with the hard hitting mechanical riffs and machinegun drums combined with the melodic stuff Soil Work did from “Natural Born Chaos” on.

Opener “Nomenklatura” pretty much shows what to expect from the band onward – heavy riffs supported by synthesizer melodies and clean sung chorus. The second song “A.E.O.N.” features completely mechanical riffing that sound like something Dino Cazares would write. The album’s most extreme song is “I Am Ultraviolence” that flows from almost black metal beats into an absolutely Nine Inch Nails moments where the music sounds like a machine that’s stuck.

All of this does sound awesome but when it is suspicious European industrial bands we’re dealing with there’s always one big “but”. The dudes just can’t help bursting out into some happy sounding dance music and make songs like “Doomsday Party”. Everyone who doesn’t like Pain should know what I am talking about. But then again if you have enough patience you’ll get to the “Love Like Blood” cover and it is something that brings back your smile.

“The Pulse of Awakening” as a whole is far from being a bad album and the band actually shows a lot of maturity managing to combine their many influences into a style of its own. This is something vocalist Ben’s (whose last name isn’t mentioned anywhere, but I’m pretty sure it is not Kenobi) singing also helps do as it is very characteristic. This is definitely a release that would help you fill the time until one of metal’s big guns releases a new album. And in the end of the year you might remember it as well.

Verdict: 4.75 / 6