Sybreed

A.E.O.N.

Written by: BL on 15/09/2009 12:12:00

Switzerland's Sybreed's previous record "Antares" was a quality marriage of a synth driven industrial sound with fiercely aggressive groove metal guitars. And as such their anticipated forthcoming new record "The Pulse of Awakening" coming this November will hopefully expand on the band's self described "Death Wave" sound even more. Until then though we have this EP "A.E.O.N." to play around with featuring two new songs that taken from the upcoming album.

While the strong points of the last album were when the synths were combined with the machine gunning guitars, here they take a somewhat backseat in what I can only really describe as a safe material from the band. Only really giving a quiet melodic backdrop to the other instruments and occasionally sparking some extra life. If you, like me was a fan of the bright melodies the synth gave us on "Antares" I wouldn't be so quick to start worrying though, as listening to one of the other new songs now available from their myspace shows that they will still play a key role.

The drumming on show here is excellent as usual, Kevin Choiral's double bass pedal work in particular makes the various complicated rhythms and time signatures effortless, as do the the guitars from Drop - though on these 2 songs you won't hear much else other than galloping chugs and the occasional lead or chorded riff (the sparse lead guitar on "A.E.O.N." around 2:37 comes in at a great time to break the monotomy and the song really starts to breathe somewhat). It's still pretty tuneful overall though if you got put off by the "chugs" description I just used. Ben's vocals combined with the backing synths provide most of the strong melodies coming through, and he still isn't half bad vocally - decent cleans and high pitched screaming reminiscent of Anders Friden from recent In Flames.

I'm in a spot of bother as to the point of this review on the whole since there isn't an awful else lot I can really say about such a short EP. These two songs are decent enough for fans of the band to check out, but the lack of prominent synth work compared to the two new songs on myspace which incidentally are a lot more interesting means I'd rather recommend "Antares" beforehand if you're interested in the band anyway. Apparently the EP was also meant to have three remixes of "Emma 0" - which I never received, though I doubt they would have changed the outcome of this short review.

6

Download: A.E.O.N, Human Black Box
For the fans of: Raunchy, Mnemic, Synthetic Breed
Listen: Myspace

Release date July 2009
Listenable Records

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