Nottingham based five piece Akarusa Yami have had a lot of attention around them over the past few years. Having played BOA twice as well as securing a slot at Trondheim Metal Fest, the progressive influenced technical metal band certainly do seem to have things going towards them. Breaking out and making a name for yourself in the music industry can be like trying to scale a mountain some people say, let’s see if this climb is too heavy for the A.Y folks.
The album itself is ten tracks long and just shy of 45 minutes which does signal for some quick moving tracks, but looking at the listing closely, two tracks are instrumental fillers and as I have mentioned in previous reviews, short instrumental fillers to me are a waste of time and they should either be tagged into the songs they precede or come on from as an extension of the intro and the outro, and when only one of them flows kind of ok, you know it’s not a good sign… But enough of that.
With all progressive metal, there is always an element of variety in terms of the approach and the opening track, “The Old Man By The Fjord” starts off rather brightly with its intro, featuring piano lines and clean guitars which work well, but for some reason the drums don’t match at all – going full out in a rather unnecessary drum solo before the track gets distorted and kicks in to a full on djent-fest. Whilst it does have a big groove to it and some shades of Meshuggah in terms of the heaviness and the sound, the pseudo-hardcore vocals don’t seem to fit, neither do the melodic shifts to clean vocal and synth laden choruses. Granted the polyrhythmic approach works well, it just doesn’t seem to sit right.
The rest of the album seems to follow this trend. There are promising grooves and heavy low end rumblings which are delightful to listen to, but the transitions to clean from the single string chugging doesn’t come off well and at times it feels a bit forced or rushed. “At Last Sunlight” would have benefitted from being heavy and groove laden throughout and the title track, “Heavy Climb” actually stays heavy throughout lyrically and instrumentally which makes it a good track so far, but the rest of the album near enough follows this formula. “Long Nights In The City” is a pointless instrumental filler which would have served better as an extended intro to “Monument Of Carnal Desire” which is just an average sounding tech/djent track with the usual metal-by-numbers approach.
“And The Night Will Take Us All” tries to blend the (modern) Devin Townsend approach to progressive metal with more technical heavy elements and the result is a nonsensical mixture of styles which doesn’t come off which includes a strange and completely out of place clean jazz styled section which derails what was an average sounding track until that point and “I Work In Formaldehyde” is just another slightly varied version of a previous track. “Loving Parents” is another pointless filler which has a slightly intriguing electronic styled synth riff but the following track, “Les Merres Terribles” doesn’t follow on or flow in the slightest and it sounds like Digimortal era Fear Factory with regards to the groove but that’s about it. It has some ok moments with riffs and complex drum patterns but the guitar solo is just cringe worthy – a really poor sounding sweep picked solo which sounds like it’s just been put there as if to say ‘look, I learned how to sweep pick but I’m still working on it guys!” It ruins what could have been an average song.
Closing track, “The Natasha Trade” is where things get dark though and it could be the only clear example of progressive metal on this album. A heavy sample based track with lots of synth and low end, it’s a haunting monologue about the underage sex trade in Eastern Europe. The dark lyrics and theme along with the dark sound is thought provoking and it is possibly the best track on the album by a long shot.
In all, this was a bit of a disappointment to say the least. When a list of influences includes the likes of Hans Zimmer, Meshuggah, Devin Townsend and Origin, you’d expect something massively heavy, intricate, well composed and capable of crafting a harsh but intriguing sonic landscape to explore. Instead it just gives a convoluted mess with no real sense of direction which is too disjointed at times. Whilst its phenomenally heavy low end at times does save it from getting lower, along with that dark as hell closing track, this is one climb I’d rather take a helicopter to the top for. On the whole, it’s just a bit dull.
(3.5/10 Fraggle)
Leave a Reply