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Grenouer - Lifelong Days

posted by: maurice on 23 July 2009

Locomotive

At the end of 2005 I already reviewed this Russian band and the EP 'Try' was the predecessor for the album 'Try' released in 2007. Starting as a Death Metal band in 1992 the band incorporated modern metal influences from bands like Meshuggah, Textures and Killswitch Engage. On the new album ‘Lifelong Days’ (already released in June 2008) I can hardly hear the Death Metal influences anymore.

The eleven songs are a mix of melodic Metalcore, the Soilwork keyboard sound and the technical metal Textures and Meshuggah is playing. That might sound as an interesting combination but it isn’t. Grenouer just picked the standard elements of the popular bands and forgot to make songs with balls. That doesn’t mean the album doesn’t contain heavy and brutal parts, like in “Employed Beggar” and “Re-Active”; but all the songs include cheesy keyboard & guitar parts and clean vocals.

On the technical side they’ve also developed a lot since the mini album ‘Try’ and the songs are produced and mixed in a professional way (the typical polished sound) just like bands like In Flames, Killswitch Engage and Soilwork have in these days. I bet a lot of East-European teenagers will go nuts on “Lifelong Days’, for the West-European market this is still too weak to compete with the already settled bands. Therefore Grenouer is just too late with this combination of styles.

Thumbs up for the multimedia part of this album; a video clip of “Re-Active”, wallpapers, remixes of five songs, lyrics and a story from every band member is available in a very stylish design.

Rating:

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Related bandprofile: Grenouer