As we enter the post-genre world, as generic divides are wilfully hopped, razed or ignored altogether, it might appear that it is the world of rock and metal that has benefited most from such a new and open attitude. It has always been a sector of the music community which thrived on sub-genres and strict sonic demarcations, wallowing in labels and a love of pigeon-holing one band as post-this, another alt-that and seemingly randomly tacking the word core on to last week’s musical fad or fashion to create the next zeitgeist.
But the reality is that such martial musical allegiances are really just the concern of journalists and fans as a way of marking their territory and any band worth their salt has always seen the advantages of gene-splicing musical DNA from various sources together to create their own signature sound in the crowded rock marketplace. Bands like Chase The Sun.
As Tears of God neatly demonstrates, this is a band which finds its influences, inspirations and infusions across a wide spectrum, fusing them together in new and interesting ways to create a sound which whilst certainly tipping its hat to the familiarity and glories of the past is also helping to pave a pathway into rock’s future.
Built on solid, technical metal riffs as delivered through an old-school, NWOBHM, foot on the monitor filter, theirs is a sound which is cavernous and sky-scrapping yet controlled and considered. The song seems to crawl rather than groove most of the time, building a lulling sense of security which means that when it does go for broke and begin fire on all cylinders the dynamic rise is all the more impressive.
And the vibe of the song is also interesting, the ever switching pace and vocal patterns mean that at times it channels the likes of Rage Against The Machine’s most well-known musical manifesto, at others old-school, classic rock as per Iron Maiden and all of the acolytes which they spawned as well as plenty of the slow burning moves of the current crop of rising metallers such as The Fifth Alliance.
From the outside it often seems as if rock and metal are stuck in their ways, or at least evolving at a glacial pace but that is perhaps because rock music has, by and large, already done a lot of the work to examine what it is over the last fifty years, finding that it is reasonably happy in its own skin. But dig a little deeper and you will find a genre which is always changing, always pushing forward, always exploring and it is thanks to bands such as Chase The Sun that things keep moving in the right direction.
