Reviews
2006-10-02
France keeps on churning interesting metal bands, this time Zuul FX is a combination of metalcore antics with industrial touches, borrowing elements from
Fear Factory and
Slipknot, while being heavier than both most of the time.
The album starts off well with "Behind The Light", good riffs combined with the plummeting drum attack, a solid sound accentuates it all. Second track - "Punisher" brings into the mix some clean vocals which reminded me a lot of Slipknot's though not as strong. The main strength if the band is when they pull all the stops and stamped in a Fear Factory infested aggression attack, as in the mid-section of "Nothing Is Real", the bits I disliked are the Slipknot-like melodic bits, such as the chorus in the same track. Another thing I would drop is all the hardcore breakdowns, some of them are unneeded.
"Cabal" has some good stoner-tinged riffs, a pretty silly text, but the song still has a good groove with the industrial elements sitting in well. "Devil Star" is one of the best tracks here, sounds like a
Ministry track with its industrialized rhythms, good solid riffs as well, and a great keyboard-driven chorus.
This is a release that shows some maturity and certainly ability, but there's too much diversity, if the tracks would keep a solid line, not mimicking too many others, it would have prefect. As it is, most of the album works well, with some tracks being absolute stand outs.
Alon Miasnikov
