Fractured Spine
Memoirs of a Shattered Mind
Inverse Records
2014
For some reason (thank God), I missed the band’s debut album last year. Unfortunately, my luck was over this year. Honestly, albums like that make me think more and more about that allowance for (mentally) unhealthy work! But let’s take things from the start.
Fractured Spine is a two-person band. It originally started as Antti’s solo project but after a few years Timo jumped in. In 2013, they released their debut album entitled “Songs of Slumber” and now after almost a year they’re back with their sophomore release. Were I to give any band some advice, it would have been to slow down their horses and their “creativity” and leave at least a two-year gap between their releases… for their own sake of course!
“Memoirs of a Shattered Mind” is a weird album… which doesn’t know what it wants to achieve and where it wanna go. It blends atmospheric, gothic metal, black metal, doom metal, death metal music but not in a very effective way. Moreover it has a dark and depressive “wannabe” atmosphere which is not “convincing” at all. The poor & weak production puts another nail in the coffin too. For the love of God, stop calling your laptop (or iMac) and your amplifier a “studio”. They are not a studio! Go out and record, mix and produce your album in a real studio. Laptops or iMacs are mostly for demo productions. The songwriting is also all over the place… without a specific plan... just whatever comes to mind – when it comes.
I don’t usually deal with other webzines but it’s truly frightful how some of them have called this album “near perfect”, “great piece of work” etc. and given it more than 8 out of 10! Whether I can’t get the greatness of such albums so I’m totally insignificant or something else is going on with those “weird non-pro reviews” which are trying to build a strong PR base for the future or gain a few extra bucks from advertisements. Either way, cut it out gents… you can’t fool anyone in the “internet time”… almost anyone can listen to any album before they get it. Be serious and stop being pitiful & writing bullshit for a few bucks.
Anyhow, “This Dying Soul” is the only track which is OK and has a “Sentenced touch” over it… the rest of the album is way too tedious, messy and tiresome for my liking…
Fractured Spine is a two-person band. It originally started as Antti’s solo project but after a few years Timo jumped in. In 2013, they released their debut album entitled “Songs of Slumber” and now after almost a year they’re back with their sophomore release. Were I to give any band some advice, it would have been to slow down their horses and their “creativity” and leave at least a two-year gap between their releases… for their own sake of course!
“Memoirs of a Shattered Mind” is a weird album… which doesn’t know what it wants to achieve and where it wanna go. It blends atmospheric, gothic metal, black metal, doom metal, death metal music but not in a very effective way. Moreover it has a dark and depressive “wannabe” atmosphere which is not “convincing” at all. The poor & weak production puts another nail in the coffin too. For the love of God, stop calling your laptop (or iMac) and your amplifier a “studio”. They are not a studio! Go out and record, mix and produce your album in a real studio. Laptops or iMacs are mostly for demo productions. The songwriting is also all over the place… without a specific plan... just whatever comes to mind – when it comes.
I don’t usually deal with other webzines but it’s truly frightful how some of them have called this album “near perfect”, “great piece of work” etc. and given it more than 8 out of 10! Whether I can’t get the greatness of such albums so I’m totally insignificant or something else is going on with those “weird non-pro reviews” which are trying to build a strong PR base for the future or gain a few extra bucks from advertisements. Either way, cut it out gents… you can’t fool anyone in the “internet time”… almost anyone can listen to any album before they get it. Be serious and stop being pitiful & writing bullshit for a few bucks.
Anyhow, “This Dying Soul” is the only track which is OK and has a “Sentenced touch” over it… the rest of the album is way too tedious, messy and tiresome for my liking…