Prepare to enter the madness of Yugal, it will twist your mind, bend your consciousness and steal your soul. Sounds like some sort of whacked out B-Movie but no, Yugal are a French band who are releasing their second EP following up from their first ‘Illusion Of Time’ last year. This was a quick fix in most ways too as their sound, described as a mix of thrash and groove metal was quick to get to grips with.
Some mellow Spanish sounding acoustic guitar work leads in to first track ‘Mindless Fool’ and then the number gets its heavyset stomp on. It sounds a bit tribal and as soon as the gruff vocals of singer GuiGui growl in and the groove hits I am in a more than familiar place somewhere around Roots era Sepultura and Soulfly. It’s got the rugged Cavalera stamp all over it and it has to be said it’s pretty damn derivative. Having said that though, it is still enjoyable and if you like the style and sound you are going to be banging your head around and want to go and wreck away in the pit to this. This catchy number is determined and gets hold of you by the teeth and doesn’t want to let go. ‘Free Jail’ continues in the same style, there’s some nice thick bass here and that Spanish guitar sound mixes well with the heaviness of the track. Vocals are angry and suitably pumped up and the rest of the band back them up with some good gang shouts. It sounds authentic, well it would do if the band were from Brazil but then again Hungarian act Ektomorf have been getting away with this for years. If Yugal were quite such as destructive as they can be I would be applauding but this lot aren’t quite in their league yet.
Tracks sound a little bit too samey for their own good, they have the template but have stuck to it a bit too rigidly and by the title track it feels like a re-run of what has come before it. Still there is a good bit of rage and its snappy and immediate enough to like, probably more so as this is only an EP rather than a full length album. Some cleaner croons add some diversity to ‘Psychotic’ and they slow things down to a simmering heat before bringing it all to boil over for the last heavy pummelling section; which certainly lives up to the track title. Last number ‘Fearless Pride’ goes for a bit of spice putting some ethnic sounds into the mix, just like certain aforementioned bands would do, so this has been pretty consistent in delivering a sound that fans of them would easily identify with. Stick around for a hidden instrumental track which takes us into a bit of Southern bluesy sounding territory, proving they may have a few other ideas out there. If they don’t keep their mojo stuck in the one place we could eventually see an interesting debut album
(6/10 Pete Woods)
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