Reviews
2009-11-22
As written in their web site, Grenouer is a band that plays death metal, combined with metalcore in order to challenge the listener. It took me a few listens to understand what is going on, and I must say, their material is really good.
The story of this band represents the heavy metal story of Russia. The band was formed in St Petersburg in the mid 90's, as a death metal act. After tons of touring around Russia, and 5 albums, they broke out of the iron curtain, in 2007. Under the British label "Casket Music", the band released "Try". The sound of the band has changed, and is now compared to Fear Factory and Meshugga. The album received a lot of good reviews from European metal magazines.
The bands new album, Lifelong Days, is a very complex combination between Fear Factory and Pestilence, with a guitar sound that reminds me of the Swedish death metal genre. It took me a while to get used to a more mid tempo and power grooves. There are no fast riffs on this one. They took only the slow riffs from the bands above, mixed them together, and put a little bit of their Russian touch on it. The resulting product is pretty impressive.
Songs like Taken Off The List, Away From Now and Re-Active emphasize the complicity of their art. Differing from the rest of the album is the last song Patience, which sound like a catchy Linkin Park song, and serves as a nice closer for the album.
A lot of effort was put to in the promo CD, it is an enchanted CD with some interactive information on the band. On the other hand, the cover, and the CD itself were lacking in professionalism.
I am happy to see that there are more bands coming out of the former U.S.S.R, bringing with them fresh sound and new ideas, Grenouer is a good example of just that.
Dolev Zaharony
