At The Soundawn
Red Square: We Come In Waves
6.9
By throwing in their lot with the post-Oceanic crowd, Italy’s At The Soundawn have set themselves a tough task to stand out. Especially tough when one considers last year’s stellar offerings from Rosetta, The Ocean and more recently Cult Of Luna with their massive Eternal Kingdom. To be fair though, Red Square: We Come In Waves is a fairly agreeable slice of atmospheric post-hardcore/metal that does very little wrong, and even has a few distinct characteristics that you won’t find in At The Soundawn’s big name contemporaries.
Let’s get the comparisons out of the way first and apart from the growled vocals that are similar to Cult Of Luna, At The Soundawn don’t really go for the dense, epic and crushing style favored by the average Isis clone. These guys are more rock than metal, with a particular penchant for clean, spacey guitar melodies that Hopesfall were once renowned for. Another quality setting this band apart is the untypical clean vocals of frontman Mirco. Distant, haunting yet strangely catchy, his singing is particularly strong on standout track “One Day Before”, while taking on an almost Layne Staley-ish quality on “Frames of You”. Other highlights include the fuzzy, dirty rock riff partway through “Submerged”, and “Rain Falls” which takes the honors as Red Square’s fastest and most aggressive song.
What makes Red Square: We Come In Waves such a solid listen is the complete absence of filler. Additionally, there are no ‘epic’ compositions here (the album clocks in at just under half an hour), so this makes At The Soundawn a somewhat less exhausting and more palatable listen than many other bands in this genre. Although there’s nothing outstanding here, Red Square is a pleasing effort that shows At The Soundawn holding their own against the post-metal heavyweights.
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