From my favourite German city Hamburg come One More Word. I can tell you that they play modern metalcore and previously released a single and an EP in their four years of existence. You now know everything about them that I do.
“Inner Demons”, which opens, is, well, modern metalcore. I like it. It’s got energy, good structure and technique, and a suitably angry vocalist to go with the wall of sound. There’s melody and even a bit of symphony. It’s important that the vocalist in particular gets into our psyche, and he does this again on “Darkest Days”, roaring down our throat with neck veins bulging, or that’s how I imagined it. Metal cannot survive on angry vocals alone, and here’s where I’d heap more praise on One More Word. There’s plenty of melody and sophisticated twists and turns here. The beginning of “The Illusion of Time” has more than air of Soilwork, and as a reference point the Swedish band is an appropriate one for the sound and some of the harmonies. There is a curious quiet vocal mid-stream, which doesn’t really work, but full marks for effort. Are they sure they haven’t borrowed Soilwork’s guitarist? Apart from the ferocious rantings of the vocalist, there’s an uncanny similarity. The cleaner, plaintive hardcore – softcore might be a better description – vocals don’t work again but there’s plenty of excitement in the instrumental assault. Again melody meets fury and anger. It’s very powerful. My head is happily going round in circles in sync with the riff. The softer opening of “The Eagle and the Snake” gave way to a welcome explosion, even if it did run out of steam at the end. But “Momentum” lives up to its name and is a fast and hard piece of melodic technical metal, with a hardcore chorus to chant along to, if you wish. Their adrenaline flowed and mine did too. This is exciting. My favourite track. It’s just a shame they didn’t come back with the hardcore chorus but that’s what the crowd needed as an outlet for the surplus energy they had just created.
“Out of Sight Out of Mind” didn’t really fill that gap but it’s an interesting song with a bit of symphony to go with that dark, djenty stuff. Like “The Eagle and the Snake” it fizzled out at the end. With this sort of style, you’re looking for climax. To my surprise “Forever” started with a male-female vocal combo. That did nothing at all for me, and summed up my view that One More Word try to do too much vocally. This is a pity because the technical instrumental content is really strong. The sirening strains which introduce “Total Eclipse” set us back on the neck-snapping road again. Again, the clean vocals are weak but the drums and technical guitar work are as dark and aggressive as hell. When they’re going mad and the vocalist is roaring, this is just brilliant. “Wheel of Suffering Samsara” takes us in a different and interesting direction. Sound echoes and symphony combine. It’s short and they could have done more with this. It could have been a prelude to a rip-roaring finale, but bizarrely it all ends with a mellow acoustic song. They lost me with that one. It’s like a different band. I didn’t get the thinking at all, but at least One More Word had provided plenty of firepower earlier in the piece.
Decent album, this. It does what it claims to do, has a few little extras and has all the ingredients you’d expect of so-called modern metalcore: energy, anger, melody but also technical accomplishment. There were quite a few touches that could have been improved to better effect for me, but overall I enjoyed “Wheel of Suffering”.
(7/10 Andrew Doherty)
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