One Year Delay - Deep Breath

One Year Delay Deep Breath cover
One Year Delay
Deep Breath
Pavement Entertainment
2015
8
One Year Delay, or OYD, describe themselves as an alternative/nu metal band. “Deep Breath” is their debut album and after the first listening, I must admit they sound promising. Less aggressive than Slipknot, with a more melodic approach than Korn, more diverse than Drowning Pool and more straightforward than System Of The Down, One Year Delay manage to find the balance that would segregate their sound in an oversaturated genre.
 
What I particularly like about this album is that it never “sounds crowded”. What I mean by that is… How may I put it? You know those bands who want to be energetic and loud and only manage to be noisy? Well One Year Delay are not that sort of a band, they let each song breathe. Each one of these musicians seems to know the #1 rule of playing in a band: You should play to serve the music. They sound like a tight unit.
 
Kicking off the album is “Gunpoint”. With an aggressive general vibe and a melodic & even slightly melancholic chorus, it is the perfect introduction to the complexity of One Year Delay. In a few words, a highly enjoyable song. Then there’s “Headhunters”, this track pretty much moves in the same path, but with a surprising, almost classic rock, guitar solo. Moving on to the darkest and most aggressive composition on the album, “Truth Dare Despair”. This track is my personal favorite. The guitar work is exquisite, the rhythm section will most definitely at some point take control of your head and make it move up and down, and as for the vocals, let’s just say that the lyric “can’t get you out of my head” couldn’t be more true.
 
After that the band makes an unexpected turn. “Water Under the Bridge” is slow, grungy and its guitar riff could almost be classified as a doom metal one, and a damn good one too. Moving on there’s “Miss You”. Melodic, groovy and very enjoyable. Maybe not the greatest track here, but a pretty good one nevertheless. Second to last is the aggressive and at times melancholic “Try to Stay Away” with its amazing bass backbone and highly emotional vocal performance.
 
Finally, there’s the 7 min long “5M 9K”. Here I did detect a little bit of a Tool vibe, but I would in no way call it a rip-off. All in all, a pretty nice way to close a pretty great record.
 
There you have it. 7 tracks with a total of 32 min of tight, aggressive and very impressive running time…