SUBSURFACE

Subsurface has some really good melodies to it that will probably hook many on with just a single listen. I didn't find anything particularly amazing about the band from the get-go, but there were plenty of cool hooks and riffs to listen to so I kept it in a fairly regular rotation. After a few listens their flair began to diminish and the album seemed more and more formulaic.

Every song follow a pretty rigid verse-chorus structure, which is nothing bad intrinsically, but without any embellishment it's just not enough to sustain songs of the lengths that appear here. For the most part every song will have a verse featuring heavy, chugging guitars, with some pretty banal keyboard effects backing them, and a melodic sing-a-long chorus featuring the entire band harmonizing in a way very reminiscent of 80s metal. Technically nothing really spectacular occurs through the album which is very much guitar dominated with some keyboards that appear to be nothing more than an afterthought and inaudible bass work.

If the songs were around the 4-5 minute mark and without the solos (very derivative and usual don't fit the song) this would be a fairly descent album. As it is, it's not good, but it's not bad either. I wouldn't recommend unless this type of pretty standard metal is really your thing.