Memorain
Duality of Man
Rock Of Angels Records
2016
Memorain is a band that has been going on now for something like sixteen years and this is their seventh album. They’ve pretty much from the go secured the services of a lot of “famous” musicians, but haven’t really managed to make it anywhere beyond the confines of the capital in Greece, achieving very little success and really not getting too far, despite the best of their efforts.
They play a thrash heavy amalgam, that owes a lot to Metallica, Megadeth and Annihilator and in some of the songs even some latter day Slayer and Forbidden influences but it is very melodic and homogenized, resulting in the riffs and compositional quality not being able to really pass a certain mark. They do manage a decent production and performances that are not at all bad, but the result feels severely lacking and the mix while solid enough (although I could hear some cymbal crushes just sounding – out there in places) lacks the necessary punch to really make things turn decidedly in their favor. Even the performances of a couple of guys from Flotsam And Jetsam and Blaze Bayley (ex-Iron Maiden, Wolfsbane) along with David Ellefson (Megadeth) on the song “The Last of Light”, don’t help the end result get any better, as a matter of fact Bayley sounds a bit odd in the track with his chesty baritone not sitting too well amongst the growls of the singer.
Almost in every song there’s a decent riff and some good ideas, but the dynamic range between the verses and the “chorus” are almost nonexistent with only the occasional solo breaking the thickness. It’s really a shame because the band doesn’t do anything particularly badly, but the singer doesn’t make the choruses stand out, instead trying too hard to sound more aggressive than he naturally sounds and the constant unchanging aggro-riffing / lack of diversity within a song, sort of kill the potential of songs like “Demon’s Hunt”, “The Giant”, “Guardian Knight” with the rest of the material also feeling just as monotonous and often simplistic and decidedly second rate…
They play a thrash heavy amalgam, that owes a lot to Metallica, Megadeth and Annihilator and in some of the songs even some latter day Slayer and Forbidden influences but it is very melodic and homogenized, resulting in the riffs and compositional quality not being able to really pass a certain mark. They do manage a decent production and performances that are not at all bad, but the result feels severely lacking and the mix while solid enough (although I could hear some cymbal crushes just sounding – out there in places) lacks the necessary punch to really make things turn decidedly in their favor. Even the performances of a couple of guys from Flotsam And Jetsam and Blaze Bayley (ex-Iron Maiden, Wolfsbane) along with David Ellefson (Megadeth) on the song “The Last of Light”, don’t help the end result get any better, as a matter of fact Bayley sounds a bit odd in the track with his chesty baritone not sitting too well amongst the growls of the singer.
Almost in every song there’s a decent riff and some good ideas, but the dynamic range between the verses and the “chorus” are almost nonexistent with only the occasional solo breaking the thickness. It’s really a shame because the band doesn’t do anything particularly badly, but the singer doesn’t make the choruses stand out, instead trying too hard to sound more aggressive than he naturally sounds and the constant unchanging aggro-riffing / lack of diversity within a song, sort of kill the potential of songs like “Demon’s Hunt”, “The Giant”, “Guardian Knight” with the rest of the material also feeling just as monotonous and often simplistic and decidedly second rate…