Monday, October 22, 2012

Halcyon Way





















Hey look it's me KEWB in for what's practically becoming a terrible habit of making posts maybe on an annual basis. Hey what can I say it's not a job to write for this, and to be perfectly honest it's not even really much of a hobby either, but once in a while I do enjoy randomly searching for obscure bands to see if I find any hidden gems. I haven't really done that in a while, but sometimes a band you've never heard of basically just sort of pops up out of nowhere and you're just sort of like wow this is pretty good. In my case, as I'm sure a lot of you know, Rock Band does this a lot to me. This band is no exception. They're entire sophomore full-length album Building the Towers is available on the Rock Band Network and they're latest album, IndoctriNation is in the process of following the same path (minus the last three tracks from the album, one of which is a cover, one of which is a radio edit of The Age of Betrayal from BTT, and the last of which is a remix of The System, also from BTT).

Let's face it, metal bands are a dime a dozen these days. I love metal, but I admit it's sort of getting out of control. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that so many of them seem to lack much creativity. Halcyon Way, on the other hand, is one of those bands that has a very distinct sound. It's moderately aggressive modern metal (though it certainly doesn't shy away from melody) with a little bit of a progressive feel to it, but the vocals are mostly clean, with plenty of harmony at times. There's still some growling vocals that we all sort of have come to expect from modern metal, but it's far from the focus of the vocals with this band. In fact, it's fairly rare. But when they ARE there, it never feels out of place to me. It's pretty tastefully done and goes well with the music. Overall they're a pretty underrated band that's well worth giving a shot if you like metal.