igneous human pyroclastic storm

Released: 05 April 2010 Label: Tractor Productions

Igneous Human. A very new band, having formed in 2008 from the remnants of Gaphia, and this is their first release, a true debut album.

Wikipedia doesn’t give a definition of Pyroclastic Storm, however, it does list pyroclastic flows and storms as separate entries under the heading of ‘Natural disasters’, so that’s not auspicious for this album.

Don’t let that put you off. This album is full of crushing riffs and pounding beats, overlaid with throat ripping vocals, but there’s also some melodic, clean guitar intros and outros, giving the album a melodic tweak that is as unexpected as it is welcome.

The only thing is, there’s nothing different about any of this that hasn’t been done before, by other bigger, better established bands, so it’s always going to struggle a bit to make a niche in what is already a crowded marketplace.

The standout track, for this writer, is the sweet instrumental, Tears, partly because it’s a lovely bit of guitar playing, but also partly because there’s no vocals on it.

This isn’t a bad album. I like the sound that they’ve developed using the instruments, but it is a rather generic ‘Swedish Metal’ sound, with any number of bands already doing this kind of thing. The vocals sound as though the front man has a really serious throat infection, and there’s no hint of it clearing up anywhere through the album. I would rather listen to this album as an instrumental than have to put up with someone grunting into a microphone under the misapprehension that the result of doing so is categorised as ‘singing’.

Not bad for a first attempt, but maybe with the second album their sound will have matured a bit more and they’ll stand out from the pack. Until then, it’s just lost among the other Swedish bands producing pretty much the same sort of sound.


by Alan Thomson