If you know anything about thrash metal then you’ll no doubt be familiar with now defunct Bradford thrashers Toranaga. One of the early bands to appear on the roster of Peaceville Records, they released two full length albums before going on a seemingly interminable hiatus with a promise of a third album in 2004 that never quite materialised. Vocalist Mark Duffy remained the most active when he went on to join X-Seed, recording one album in the mid-90s but has remained quiet until returning with his new outfit, Face The Unknown. There appears to be very little in the way of information about the band; there’s a MySpace page but aren’t listed on Metal Archives and considering they allegedly formed in 2006 they seem to have taken their time in bringing out this three track demo. Line-up woes sounds to be the reason for this; what I’m sure is a familiar dilemma to many musicians reading this.
It’s quite clear that Face The Unknown, despite having some fairly established musicians in the line up, are just finding their feet. While some bands take their time with gigging and rehearsing and working on material and come out with a professionally packaged self-released album, these have gone for the option of almost rushing out a demo, and this is clearly a rough demonstration of what’s to come, rather than something you’ll be inclined to play again and again. Rather than keep heads in the past by doing the thrash/NWOBHM fans of Toranaga or X-Seed might expect, this has a very modern sound to it. In fact, this has much more in common with the Pantera school of metal; it’s menacing and meaty and mixes some classic guitar melodies with a ton of chug!
The vocals have quite a gravely blues delivery on ‘Love To Hate’ in particular, and am reminded a little of Layne Staley’s style of rock’n’roll singing with Velvet Revolver. There is little variation of sound here, which is fine if you’re after some simple hard rock with a good beat behind it. This is fairly average stuff if I’m being entirely honest, but the potential is there and with a bit of work and fine tuning they may get somewhere. I look forward to the album.
http://www.myspace.com/facetheunknown
