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The Other is a Horror Punk band from over in Sweden, and are considered one of the more important bands of that scene. After one listen with their fourth full-length effort, New Blood, it becomes pretty obvious why. Taking many of the positive aspects of bands you would lump into these styles, such as The Misfits, Danzig, and even some Murderdolls in the edginess of the music itself. But while all of these factors lead to an album that isn't all that original, which honestly can never be too original since the aforementioned The Misfits, it sure does put on one hell of a show that pays tribute to the roots of the style nicely. A good chunk of the music on New Blood is about what you would expect from some of the originators of the style, having a very heavy Punk sound rooted in the music, but sometimes it's hard to tell exactly how much of a Punk influence there is in the music. Right off the bat, the album kicks in with "Back to the Cemetery", the first real song off the album since "New Blood" is a small introductory instrumental that is nice, but like, usual, doesn't do much. This song has all the cliche's related to the style, and comes at a rather mid-tempo with strong riffs, but doesn't necessarily do much to stand out. The difference here compared to others is how heavy the guitars sound, and the drumming keeps up very well through the whole song, giving a very strong Heavy Metal feel to the track everywhere but the catchy Punk-oriented chorus and the bridge that follows it. "The Burial" winds up being another one of these types of songs, but the main difference here lies in the speed of the song in general. Between fast guitars and drumming, one would think that some of this were literally lifted from a Heavy Metal act, but still manages to keep the clean singing associated with horror Punk to maintain the style the group originally was pushing for with this release. Aside the introductory title track, there's nothing bad to be said about the album, but there still lingers some issues regardless. First of all, the vocals on the album work very well, and in many times manage to create an appropriate fun, yet creepy atmosphere such as in "Castle Rock". However, there are times when you'll wind up listening and think you're cracking up when you hear a bit of a lisp going on, such as during "Transylvania" where the vocals do wind up sounding a bit slurred. It happens sometimes here, which is confusing considering how clear the singing is during "The Lovesick Mind" with it's deep singing at the start and haunting overall music in the vein of Danzig. Outside that, some of the album can start to become a bit repetitive. Going back to "The Lovesick Mind", it's a fantastic song that acts more as a ballad then anything, and it really breaks the song up in the album since many of them seem to follow a similar pattern of having a strong, edgier foundation, with or without that noted Heavy Metal aspect, but then go into a simple, catchy chorus which sometimes is just a few words expanded on the title song and repeated. Sure, it works for the most part, but a little more could have been done with some of the songs here. Luckiily it's at this point that the album, actually does start shaking up a bit. While the repetitive nature of the lyrics for the chorus doesn't change, the music sure does. With "The Lovesick Mind" really changing things up, much of the closing album seems to follow that track's more haunting ballad example and try to build the sound they kicked the album off around it. "Blood Runs Cold" is the perfect example of it by trying to be a very dark song that brings in some faster music and yet another simple yet catchy chorus of repeating the song title and having a few words tacked on to make it sound different. These songs are enjoyable on a whole other level, but just really are not as good as the more upbeat songs that kick start the album as they actually come off far more simpler then before, growing increasingly mundane and more repetitive then before until "Demons Walk the Earth" which just picks up the speed back to the start of the album. It's clear why The Other is a highly noted band in the horror Punk genre, and they definitely have what it takies to survive. New Blood is worth checking out by any fan of this style of music at any given moment, but to those who aren't absolutely obsessed, there's just too many songs that have the same structure or chorus composition to be ignored, and it gets really irritating by the midway point. Once you hit "The Lovesick Mind", the album seems to become filler and doesn't really offer anything too new for the fans to enjoy, leaving this release more as something that should have just been kept for an EP or something along those lines to incorporate the first seven songs, sans "New Blood". Either way, the album may be a bit of a letdown in the long run, but there's still plenty of fun songs on here worth checking out that will earn some heavy replay time for the listener. |
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