The Halo Effect - New Album 2023/2024
- Thread starter DE4life
- Start date
I think the last three releases have been songs people could already have heard before. Path of Fierce Resistance was a Japanese bonus that was weirdly passed off as a new track when released, only to be acknowledged as a bonus track later on, whilst Defiant One and Become Surrender have already been played live and are acknowledged as tracks from the DotL sessions that didn't make the final cut. It would be nice to hear something genuinely fresh.
The Grayfox
Gravesinger
Maybe that's the point. They want to save the fresh stuff for closer to release. Maybe it's easier to justify releasing singles early if they're leftover tracks from the last album. Who knows?
I'm a big fan of electronics, 80s synth stuff, and DM. But there is good stuff and then there is...well Cyhra.
With metal bands it rarely works, because they all tend to replace good guitar content with cheesy sounds and then relegate guitars to playing powerchords or chugging in the background.
It is funny, MDM bands never sit down and say, hey our last album was good, but let's make the new one more agressive, more complex, faster, darker, more interesting. Maybe even a brave step out of 110-130 bpm comfort zone...
Nope, it's always - shorter, more simple, kinda decent chorus and with as little effort as possible, while still pretending we're a metal band because we have a guitar plugged into an amp.
With metal bands it rarely works, because they all tend to replace good guitar content with cheesy sounds and then relegate guitars to playing powerchords or chugging in the background.
It is funny, MDM bands never sit down and say, hey our last album was good, but let's make the new one more agressive, more complex, faster, darker, more interesting. Maybe even a brave step out of 110-130 bpm comfort zone...
Nope, it's always - shorter, more simple, kinda decent chorus and with as little effort as possible, while still pretending we're a metal band because we have a guitar plugged into an amp.
I don't mind that 80s electronic sound at all, and certain newer bands aiming for that kind of vibe pull it off well (Nitrate for example, or Beast in Black).
MDM bands though... yeah, it pretty much just feels like they're replacing what would be an awesome guitar lead or solo with keys, which for most people is going to sound like a downgrade. Electronics are fine when used sparingly and at the right moments (I'd say Reroute and Soilwork's NBC both do a good job of this), but they can become annoying when overused. Especially when it's a band like IF who don't even have an actual fucking keyboard player.
I felt like DotL was more experimental than people give it credit for. Sure, it was nothing groundbreaking, but there was a lot of variety across the album. The tracks all sound different and have specific vibes to them. You aren't going to confuse Gateways with Shadowminds, or In Broken Trust with Last of Our Kind. It isn't 'back to da rootz' like 90s MDM classic in 2020's form known as Foregone, but more like a celebration of various flavours of MDM that these guys have experienced or been a part of during their long careers.
If the next album is also in that vein then I'm cool with that. Keep it going strong, there's plenty of material to work with. If it's like Cyhra 2 with homogenous tracks littered with shitty electronics then that will be a fucking disappointment. I don't think it will be, but I'd like to hear some genuinely new material to better understand where they're going with this next release. Japanese DOTL bonus and DOTL b-sides are not the way to build hype.
MDM bands though... yeah, it pretty much just feels like they're replacing what would be an awesome guitar lead or solo with keys, which for most people is going to sound like a downgrade. Electronics are fine when used sparingly and at the right moments (I'd say Reroute and Soilwork's NBC both do a good job of this), but they can become annoying when overused. Especially when it's a band like IF who don't even have an actual fucking keyboard player.
I felt like DotL was more experimental than people give it credit for. Sure, it was nothing groundbreaking, but there was a lot of variety across the album. The tracks all sound different and have specific vibes to them. You aren't going to confuse Gateways with Shadowminds, or In Broken Trust with Last of Our Kind. It isn't 'back to da rootz' like 90s MDM classic in 2020's form known as Foregone, but more like a celebration of various flavours of MDM that these guys have experienced or been a part of during their long careers.
If the next album is also in that vein then I'm cool with that. Keep it going strong, there's plenty of material to work with. If it's like Cyhra 2 with homogenous tracks littered with shitty electronics then that will be a fucking disappointment. I don't think it will be, but I'd like to hear some genuinely new material to better understand where they're going with this next release. Japanese DOTL bonus and DOTL b-sides are not the way to build hype.
Regarding the already known old songs being released first, I'm pretty sure this is label's choice and if you think from a business perspective, it does make sense. The worst thing you can do today is to release official music as late possible. So they have a choice of releasing new tracks right and shortening the total marketing lifespan of the new album - or they can release the "old" songs first, which is annoying to total 5 fans on this forum yet is still new music to a lot of metal fans online who are only now discovering this still largely unknown band. And then they also have presumably even better totally new songs to push later on. I don't like it either but nowadays its all about milking the hype for as long as possible.
As for the electronics discussion... I believe it somehow became faux pas to play completely "naked" with just the instruments on the stage into the PA system. Having these electronic tidbits that aren't even musical at all and are merely effects that are meant to provide some kind of atmosphere seem to serve the purpose of merely signaling that you are not a savage brute and that your music is a lot more complex despite deceivingly simple power chord pumping.
It's also a nifty trick in the truest sense of that word - if you don't have such elements to your music and you decide to run a backing track here and there for particularly difficult vocal bits or additional guitars, it will stand out immediately. But this way when the listener is acutely aware of backtrack running with additional sounds, it's much easier to subconsciously attribute all the actual music you are hearing as being legitimately played on stage and thinking that purpose of the backtrack is simply for the synthetic bells and whistles. I'm not accusing THE of this, but merely talking in general when bands do this stuff.
Maybe I'm overthinking all of this to some degree too.
As for the electronics discussion... I believe it somehow became faux pas to play completely "naked" with just the instruments on the stage into the PA system. Having these electronic tidbits that aren't even musical at all and are merely effects that are meant to provide some kind of atmosphere seem to serve the purpose of merely signaling that you are not a savage brute and that your music is a lot more complex despite deceivingly simple power chord pumping.
It's also a nifty trick in the truest sense of that word - if you don't have such elements to your music and you decide to run a backing track here and there for particularly difficult vocal bits or additional guitars, it will stand out immediately. But this way when the listener is acutely aware of backtrack running with additional sounds, it's much easier to subconsciously attribute all the actual music you are hearing as being legitimately played on stage and thinking that purpose of the backtrack is simply for the synthetic bells and whistles. I'm not accusing THE of this, but merely talking in general when bands do this stuff.
Maybe I'm overthinking all of this to some degree too.
I can see where they were going with this one. The intro is decent, quite different to other songs on DOTL. You've got the 'headbangable' riffs which will work well live. The verses are alright but nothing special. The brief guitar solo is nice enough, bit of an IF vibe at the beginning. The chorus sounds way, way too much like In Broken Trust. 'I don't wanna feel this real' / 'I don't want fallen angels' - 'We become surrender' / 'Our trust is failing' - it's almost like an alternate take of the IBT chorus - I thought of it immediately. Part of it comes from Mikael often using similar vocal patterns, but this is a bit too close for comfort.
Anyway, much like Defiant One, this song is alright but it isn't giving us anything new. Very much still sounds like a rehash of DOTL ideas. Agree that the production is really good, and Mikael also sounds great. I really love how his growls come across on THE stuff, just feels a lot stronger than recent DT albums. Not sure if it's just a production/mixing thing.
Anyway, much like Defiant One, this song is alright but it isn't giving us anything new. Very much still sounds like a rehash of DOTL ideas. Agree that the production is really good, and Mikael also sounds great. I really love how his growls come across on THE stuff, just feels a lot stronger than recent DT albums. Not sure if it's just a production/mixing thing.
Xpyro125
Member
- Dec 1, 2021
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Just got to listen to it. I can’t comment on the production because my headphones are actual ratfucked garbage (Wired Bluetooth headphones that just murder the guitars in most songs), but I love the bass tone, the drumkit sounds great, and Stanne is in top fucking form here, holy shit. These are some of the best growls and clean singing I’ve heard from him, and I’m so glad that the mixing didn’t let this one’s vocals down like with In Broken Trust.
Gonna be listening to this for a while.
Gonna be listening to this for a while.
The Grayfox
Gravesinger
I'm quite enjoying Become Surrender. The clean vocals here seem to compliment the music much better than they did on DotL imo. I still feel like they're very out of place on that album and I don't like either song that features them. I'm also hoping they're used sparingly on this album because although I do really like Become Surrender, I don't want an entire album of it.
If we assume the last two songs to be an extension of DotL, which is basically what they are as they were created during those sessions, then I'd give Defiant One a 7/10 and Become Surrender a 7.5/10. On the lower end of the scale compared to the other songs on DotL... but that's probably why they didn't make the cut. Still decent enough though, and as far as I'm concerned better than everything on Foregone.
ThePhobiac
be at ease
As expected, doesn't do much for me. It is not offensive or bad, just the wrong genre and forgetable.
- nu/industrial intro
- WATV/Construct verse
- meh chorus, also lifted straight from another THE or DT song. Cleans work a bit better than on other THE songs, but still out of place
- decent bridge to the solo. Cut short and never revisited.
- random solo
- more meh choruses. The structure of the song is painfully standard.
Would say 6/10 and rightfully cut from the album. Heard it 3 times today and can't remember much from it except that awful intro effect.
Hope that the actual album will be much, much better than this. Unfortunately they seem to be drifting towards the sound of the later parts of Engelin's career and worst DT albums.
- nu/industrial intro
- WATV/Construct verse
- meh chorus, also lifted straight from another THE or DT song. Cleans work a bit better than on other THE songs, but still out of place
- decent bridge to the solo. Cut short and never revisited.
- random solo
- more meh choruses. The structure of the song is painfully standard.
Would say 6/10 and rightfully cut from the album. Heard it 3 times today and can't remember much from it except that awful intro effect.
Hope that the actual album will be much, much better than this. Unfortunately they seem to be drifting towards the sound of the later parts of Engelin's career and worst DT albums.
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