2004-06-26
Renowned Spanish metallers Easy Rider release their fourth album, Animal, and even though some changes in the line up we're made, they're as strong as ever.
The band is no new comer to the scene, existing since 1990, but not releasing they're first album, Perfecta Creación, until 1997, they're experience and professionalism is evident in the music.
The band delivers straight forward metal, with both thrash-like and progressive facets, vocalist Ron Finns's voice is a sharp, melodic rasp, baring a slight edge to it, the twin guitars providing some memorable riffs and good, solid leads.
The thing that I really liked in the band, was they're lack of assumptions, they do not try to create the grandest, most dramatic metal possible, but rather strong, tune-based metal, relying more on solid riffs and good song writing then overly dramatic and bombastic metal, they make good music, write good songs, and that's enough for me.
From the immediate aggressiveness of Visions, to the excellent chorus in Animal, the band delivers the goods, songs like Casting The Shadows Of Sin contain some interesting spoken passages, and almost every track has at least on good hook in it, Animal is one good, hard hitting metal album, which I recommend heartily.
Alon Miasnikov
