Monday, January 2, 2012

ORIZ: "Oriz II"


Rating: 4/10

Label: Doolittle Group/Liljegren Records 2011

Review by Kimmo Toivonen

Now here's a strange album... Swedish melodic metal group Oriz specialize in... well, melodic metal and hard rock. Just my kind of music usually, but not in the case of Oriz. While in theory their songs are at least half-decent hard rock tracks, there's something that's horribly wrong with them. The lifeless production maybe? The dull songwriting? The sometimes clumsy lyrics? The average vocals buried deep in the mix? Maybe all of the above...

The album opener "Forever Free" is by far the band's strongest song, but it's all downhill from there. What's more, Oriz seems to have a weird fascination with annoying synth sounds. The irritating parp that destroys the otherwise decent "Put Out The Flame" is the best (or worst?) example of that. I wonder whether they sampled that riff from an Aqua album...

After the fourth song there's not much to write home about, merely one dull song after another, each one of them suffering of the muddy production. A shame really, because at times there are glimpses of something much better...

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