In my more confused moments, I wonder how many actual industries are active in Sweden. After a scrumpy or five, I can only really think of Volvo, Ikea, and a massive music industry. How does such a small nation, population wise at least, produce so many bands covering the whole spectrum of metal from the extreme to the melodic, as well as pop acts such as Abba and their mainstream successors? For whatever reason, yet another band has been produced by that fine nation in the form of four piece Korea, following up on their 2008 debut album ‘For The Present Purpose’ with sophomore release ‘The Delirium Suite.’
Having not heard of the original, let alone heard it, I can’t really comment on how the band has developed, and instead decided to listen to this album as a stand alone, and let it sink or swim on its own merits, whatever they may be. Well, for starters, I think you’d be hard pressed to call this a metal album, even a melodic one, and is far more fairly in the league of anthemic rock that the likes of Muse produce to fill up Wembley stadium time and again. Every track has multi-layered guitar parts, overdubbed, clean vocals, and a fair amount of sampling and keyboard work, album openers ‘Cataclysm’ and ‘The Absentee’ setting the stage for tracks that are as much a tribute to the producer and engineer as they are the musician. By track four, ‘Street Spirit’ the Muse button is turned up to eleven, singer Michael Ehrnsten sounding like he borrowed Matthew Bellamy’s vocal chords for the day.
Once or twice, slightly more metallic guitar riffs fired out, the opening bars of ‘Cave Dweller’ promising something harder, but within a minute of those first chords firing out, the track had been layered up and reined in, the musical originality it showed from the other tracks on the album obscured by too many elements being thrown into the mix.
Don’t get me wrong, this album has some good points. The aforementioned vocalist has a good clean rock voice, and all instruments are played well. But as a four piece band of guitar, bass, drums and vocals, to reproduce this epic sound live, they would either have to play to a host of backing tracks, or at least employ an extra live keyboard player or three. If you listen to rock as a good reason to gaze at your shoes, buy this album. If you want metal that gets you into the pit, don’t.
http://www.myspace.com/koreasweden
