Malaki
By The Hand of God
5
Once again it a demo album falls into my hands. Demos are always a toss-up because they haven’t even passed the filter of being signed. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised, as if I’m in on a secret that no one else knows of yet, other times I get total crap, and many times I get bands that have moderate talent, without having that special something that sets apart the worthy from the hordes of the unimpressive. The band of the day falls into that last category.
Malaki comes to us from Florida, home to metal greats like Trivium and Capharnaum, and I think there were some death metal bands from back in the day. Anyhow, Malaki sounds nothing like those bands, but a three song demo only makes for a half-length review. What they do sound like is an unusual blend of nu-metal and simplistic death metal. Particularly in the vocals, where singer Ray switches off between a respectably gruff, grizzly bear-like roar, and a nasally, Korn-like delivery that just grates on my ears. Apparently people still listen to Korn…who knew? Their guitar duo is more up to the task, showing some acoustic ability, as well as rudimentary thrash and groove riffs.
The first song begins with an extended acoustic intro that sounds dark, then a rumblingly-heavy part kicks in with some guitar squeals. So far, so good. Then those sung vocals come in… The next song starts off with some guitar noises that sound like those that littered Machine Head’s later albums. It maintains a medium tempo until the end where it picks up a lot. If the production were louder on the guitars, it could only help. As it is, the vocals drown out the instruments. The last song is the best of the three, moving along at an aggressive clip, and featuring some of that groove they boast about. If it were 1996, my high-school self would be loving this song.
But it’s 2005, so quite a bit of this demo sounds dated. However, judging by the fact that so many of the rock radio stations out there seem to be stuck in the 90’s, there’s probably still a demand for bands like Malaki. While Malaki is doing some things right within the framework of a modern-day nu-metal sound, I cannot really see either the new metalcore crowd really going for this, or our more discerning metalhead audience. Keep on plugging away, men, there’s a generation of grungy late-20-somethings in search of more music like this.
