I read of a connection with Killswitch Engage. I see mention of hardcore and punk meeting metal, of experimentation, and of politicisation of content. The upshot was that I didn’t know what to expect from Death Ray Vision’s third album release, and that’s just fine.

There’s an element of Darkane in the vocals, I concluded. It’s like a metal message board. The instrumentals have technical melody and a bit of djent but are ultimately born of classic heavy metal. “In Unholy Water” is straight out of the book of classic metal n roll. There’s plenty of melody and firepower. “From the Rafters” is thrashy with a hardcore chorus. It’s effective and would work live, but I’m struggling to find anything experimental about it. One hard rock song is trotted out after another, and whilst I can’t fault the tightness of the instrumentals or the solidity of the structure, I found this album wasn’t breaking any boundaries. There is a punkishness about the vocals, which are the foil to the most solid of riffs and twisty guitar work but I didn’t feel any edge.

“An Iron Age” is fast and hard – “fight to the death”, exhorts the hardcore chorus gang – and we get a neat guitar solo. “Armageddon is the Answer” is not only a song title, but a chorus line. It’s sung in such a melodic way that it belies the message somewhat. To be fair, the song takes a rare incursion into darker realms but it’s not sustained because we’re already on to the next song. Death Ray Vision don’t waste time with their songs but left me thinking “is that it?” more than once. The emotive chorus in “Crawl Forward the Cowards”, which featured the album’s title was a step up from the other songs as I was able to feel the passion and energy. It works well with the guitar solo, but was the only song on the whole album which made any real impact on me. The final “is that it?” was “End Me”, which contains the ingredients that can be found elsewhere on this album and has technical merit, but for me failed to rise above the parapet in the inspiration department.

I was disappointed with this album. It’s not badly played at all and to a point it has energy, but it was short on highlights and was very predictable.

(5/10 Andrew Doherty)

https://www.facebook.com/DeathRayVision

https://deathrayvision.bandcamp.com/album/no-mercy-from-electric-eyes