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TOC
(formerly known as Thrown Of Chaos) was founded in Finland in the
mid nineties by Taneli, Snake, Joiku and Rasmus. Their debut album
“Menace And Prayer” was released in 2000 and was so successful that
it was decided to move the band from Spike to Spinefarm Records.
After their second album “Pervertigo”, “Loss Angeles” is their third
release.
“The
Window”, the best track on the album, is a very strong opener, a
real progmetal song with a strong melody, everything perfect in
balance, perfectly produced and a jazzy quiet middle piece. The
voice of Tuomas sounds somewhere between Daniel Gildenlow (Pain of
Salvation) and Geoff Tate (Queensryche) and certainly gives an extra
dimension to this song and to the whole album.
“Mary Lou Is Dead” has all the well known ingredients of a great
ballad; the guitar solo and keyboards included.
But
then suddenly lightning strikes and the style of track 3 is totally
different. Heavy metal mixed with death metal grunts. This explains
the reference to Children Of Bodom in their biography. The song
contains a great chord progression. If you can live with the grunts,
this is a great rock song.
The
rest of the album gives us a mix of these different styles.
“Gothamburg”, “Blue Lady” and “Wait”, all semi-ballads, contain a
lot of symphonic keyboards riffs and melodic guitar tunes and can be
filed under progmetal. The “Everyday without you” part from the
chorus of “Wait” will stay in your mind for some time after you get
to know it.
In
“The Blue Lady Suite”, a short instrumental, the musicians,
especially the drummer, get the chance to prove their skills.
“Break-A-Neck” is another piece for death metal fans. “’Bite The
Bullet” compensates this outburst with a very quiet start, to end in
a progmetal ballad style.
The
cover “Smoke On The Water” is very funny. I don’t know if it’s meant
as a joke, but you certainly can’t avoid a smile when you hear the
grunted “Fire In The Sky” part in this speedy version of the classic
Deep Purple song.
The
bonus track is a well played cover version of “Night Crawler” (Judas
Priest)
This
has become a great album (InsideOut know how to pick their bands),
but I’m afraid the mixing of the styles won’t do them any good. The
grunting will scare some people off, although they only do it on a
few tracks. |
