Artist - Kiju
Title- Ignite the Revolt
Type- Album
Label- Serpentine Records
Having discovered some fantastic new (not nu) metal coming out of Italy in the last few years, I was eagerly looking forward to the latest offering from Kiju. Billing themselves as Thrash/Groove metal, I thought what’s not to like? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. It’s not especially thrashy, nor groovy for the most part. What Kiju seem to specialise in is closer to metalcore than any of the above, and if I’m honest, it’s never been a genre that I’ve ever been particularly fond of. Even so, nothing ventured, nothing gained, so maybe there is something here that could change my opinion of it all.
Considering that ‘Ignite The Revolt’ is such a short album, clocking in at around the half an hour mark, I was surprised to find the opening track was 30 seconds of inconsequential bugger-allness, but when the title track finally kicks in, it is a noticeable kick in the pants. Featuring full on aggression from the opening note, what it lacks in finesse it makes up for in bludgeoning brutality. That being said, once the initial buzz has worn off after about 20 seconds, what remains is a passable if slightly sloppy mix of Chimaira and Soulfly. Vitto’s vocals certainly carry a passing resemblance to those of Max Cavalera as does the guitar sound, whilst the skin annihilation is straight out of Chimaira’s book. ‘New World Oblivion’ has a punky pit stompability factor thrown in to the mix, and it does actually work rather well. The occasional impassioned spoken word passages are of course annoying, but various minor niggles aside Kiju do manage to get some variation into their songs and some genuine moments that got my head nodding along in appreciation, ‘Breath or Suffocate/Resurrection’ being a case in point, featuring an excellent drum driven break into the chorus that’s effective in its simplicity and really gets the juices flowing.
The beginning of ‘Cloud’s Start to Burn’ could be mistaken for Godsmack with its slow and atmospheric groove and haunting distant vocal. Inevitably, this soon reverts to the standard flat shout, but there’s enough going on here musically to keep things interesting. Of course it doesn’t all work, musically, the title track is a bit of a miss, and vocally Vitto often misses then mark when he does try to vary from the usual shout, as on the chorus to ‘Disaster’ which turns a promising song into pub band fodder in one fell swoop. Final track ‘Endless Storm’ manages to hit both extremes, with some fantastically groovy moments, and then some clunky moments of Biohazard worship that were best left well alone.
Well after my initial disappointment with ‘Ignite the Revolt’, (I truly hated it after the first listen); I started to feel elements of it growing on me. There are flashes of inspiration here, although they are maybe not quite as prolific with them as they would hope to be. There’s still a heavy dose of bland shoutyness about the whole thing, and ok, some bands have managed to base whole careers off the back of that, but there’s usually a bit more to back them up, a decent hook or riff. Kiju do have those too, but they are in short supply. There’s something there though, and I do get the impression that maybe down the line they’ll deliver their breakthrough album and hit the big time. Unfortunately, this isn’t it.
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