Unchained Reality – Unchained Reality

[nyrating]

17th November 2015 Reinier de Vries Album Reviews 0

More than a month ag,o I received a promo of this Dutch band in the mail. The album was already released so I put it beside to review others first. Last week, I found it again, started to listen to it and came to the conclusion that the band deserves to be reviewed. The label Painted Bass Records is also a new label and I think they deserve the support as well as starting a label in this download era isn’t easy.

The main man in this band is vocalist Koert Van Zon and he wrote the material together with Daan Janzing (guitar), Sebas Honig and Don Dietvorst. Strange, however, is that the last two are no members of the band. Besides Koert and Daan, the band is completed by Martijn Balsters (guitar), Jason Duykers (bass) and Tim Verheijden on drums. The music is a mix of melodic heavy metal and Bay Area thrash. In the eighties, we probably would have called it speed metal with thrash influences. The band sounds a bit like a more melodic version of Forbidden, the songs sound just a little less heavy (read thrashy).

Koert’s voice also has some similarities with the Forbidden vocalist, but that could be just a coincidence. “Stranger” is a track where the jumpy riffs and style sound the most like Forbidden. After that, the up-tempo track “Pain” follows with a kind of high speed Iron Maiden sound with thrash riffs – it is one of my favorite tracks. Most of the songs are very catchy and make you jump up and down. It isn’t easy to just listen to “Wrong Place Wrong Time” without moving. “Still Fucking Mad” is the heaviest and one of the fastest tracks, pure Bay Area thrash – no more no less. After that, the tempo even increases in “Open Your Eyes” and “Fearless”. A nice ending of this record.

The only slight negative point about this album is the lack of originality. If they tried to put in just a little more new riffs instead of reproducing some fine old thrash riffs, Unchained Reality would really nail it.

Tracklist:

01. Better Off
02. Computerized Humanity
03. In My Way
04. You Will Always Be Alive
05. Stranger
06. Pain
07. Legalize
08. Wrong Place Wrong Time
09. Still Fucking Mad
10. Open Your Eyes
11. Fearless

Playing time: 37:00

Release date: September 2015

Label: Painted Bass Records

Website: www.unchainedreality.com

About Reinier de Vries 188 Articles

Once a metal head, always a metalhead. My parents thought it would only be a period, but they were wrong. I quit to explain the beauty of metal music to others that are not into metal, because it is something you can't tell in words... It is like explaining to a teetotaller why a cold beer is so nice on a hot day... I started with bands like Accept, Metal Church, Iron Maiden and Metallica in the eighties and I think I will still listen to them when I'm stone deaf and old...