Soil’s journey
started from the bottom, just like every other band. I’m not going to get too
much in to their history, but it wasn’t until their second full length album,
and major label debut Scars that the
band seemed to show some minor promise. Their song Halo turned out to be just like Bodies for Drowning Pool,
just slightly less memorable. But to give Drowning Pool credit, it’s hard to
say where they’d have gone had their original singer Dave Williams not passed away right after hitting success.
The difference Halo
had from songs like Bodies or Puddle of Mudd’s Blurry is that of the people who know the latter two songs, a lot
don’t even know the name of the bands who perform them, let alone anything else
those bands ever did. The fans that Halo
and the Scars album in general that
were generated did a pretty good job at staying with the band throughout Soil's
rather underground career.
After releasing one more album, Redefine, lead vocalist Ryan
McCombs decided to leave the band and take a hiatus from music in general,
only to get replaced by vocalist A.J.
Cavalier playing with the rest of the bands original members (drummer Tom Schofield and one of the bands two
guitarists, Shaun Glass, would
eventually also leave some years later). After deciding he wanted to get back
in to the music business, Ryan, realizing it was too late to rejoin his former
band instead became the new lead singer for, surprise surprise, Drowning Pool, after the departure of
Dave Williams’ replacement Jason Jones.
Both Soil and Drowning Pool would release two albums with
their then current singers before Ryan’s 2011 reunion with Soil. I’m not aware
if Ryan left Drowning Pool to return to Soil, or if he was let go in general,
but Soil was given new life with the opportunity to return to the roots that
got them some attention ten years earlier. In August, Soil released Whole, their first new album since
2009’s Picture Perfect and their
first with their original singer since 2004’s Redefine.
The album starts off with Loaded Gun, showing immediately that the band wanted to return to
their familiar style of alternative metal, showing little difference in their
technique and all around motive, despite maybe some slight southern metal
influences added to their sound. The song features Ryan’s familiar ballsy and
raspy yet relatively clean voice singing aggressively over top of highly
distorted guitars and drums.
The album continues to belt out less than happy songs like The Hate Song, which lyrically I
personally quite like, and Ugly,
adding more insult to some protagonist in the bands life that they don’t seem
to like.
Way Gone changes
the albums sound a bit. Still as angry as the previous three songs, it features
a more prominent slow vibe during its verses before unleashing a full, balls
out, angry as ever chorus.
The album steps away from its slow gloomy sound momentarily
on the fast paced Psychopath. This thrashing
song never lets up for a second. It’s that song on the album for the crowd to
mosh to when the band inevitably performs it live, as any metal band seemingly has
to do to please a crowd. The next closest thing this album has to a track as
intense as Psychopath is my personal favourite track, Amalgamation, which is not as fast, though it is the second fastest
paced song on the album. It doesn’t sound like it was made for the sole purpose
of moshing to, but knowing metal fans, they’ll find a way.
Shine On brings the
album back to its slow, heavy alternative metal sound, followed by Wake Up; a song that sounds like an
early 2000’s alternative/”nu” metal song with its easy to remember angry lyrics
and its palm muted guitars, giving a crowd something to jump to. My Time is another track that holds no
true spotlight on the album compared to other songs.
The album ends with One
Love, a slow and dark track which puts the album in to perspective, summing
it up rather nicely. Its verses, much like Way
Gone, are played in a dark ballad form, only to pick up the distortion for
the chorus. Lyrically it slightly lacks a punch, but it is easy to sing along
to. Unlike Way Gone, this song is slower, and remains rather consistently
slower until its bridge, when the song just takes a complete turn and picks up
its intensity to something comparable to that of Amalgamation, further summing
the album up rather nicely.
The problem with the album is that it hardly differs from any
of the bands other previously mentioned contemporaries. The sound of the album
stays consistent to a type of metal that was never really the most popular
style of metal music to begin with. Had the album has more songs on it like Psychopath, Amalgamation or even One
Love, then I’d say this album is more significant than it actually is.
However, given what we are provided with, the album is really good. I would
have to call this the best album Soil
has ever released, but should they release another album, I’d hope they change
things up slightly more than they already have.
ALBUM HIGHLIGHT
“Little Liar” – Considering this albums
abundance of slow paced heavy tracks, it would be fitting to pick one of them
as the highlight. Among the many slower paced songs on the album, I find that Little Liar stands out above the rest.
Ryan changes his singing style between the verses, pre-chorus and chorus very
well, and the harmonized vocals heard on the chorus show a terrific sense of
musicality that isn’t heard at many points on the album, giving the listener a
bit of a welcome change.
FINAL RATING
8(Out of 10)
Track List:
1.
|
Loaded Gun
|
2:53
|
2.
|
The Hate Song
|
3:13
|
3.
|
Ugly
|
3:47
|
4.
|
Way Gone
|
3:32
|
5.
|
Psychopath
|
2:43
|
6.
|
Shine On
|
3:25
|
7.
|
Wake Up
|
3:04
|
8.
|
Amalgamation
|
3:36
|
9.
|
My Time
|
3:04
|
10.
|
Little Liar
|
3:34
|
11.
|
One Love
|
4:49
|
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