Norway's Virus want to create a sort of free-form heaviness thatchanges your perception of what to expect from the hardcore metal genrein an effort to promote versatility and variation. What they ended upwith is a lite version of adrenaline-fueled pound and screech with across between Mike Patton and Serj Tankian on vocals. Which ultimatelymeans sometimes the vocals are on key, sometimes nowhere near, and itsounds like that may or may not have been a conscious choice; but themusic is stable, engaging even, with sadly very little change from onetrack to the next. Virus try hard to make the songs blend together intoa congruous whole, with tracks fading into each other and combiningelements, but the music is so derivative and the vocal performancesoften so horrendous that it's hard to find anything really to latch onto. Incidentally, where other import artists have stayed with theirnative tongue or tried at some deeper meaning in the translation, Virusemote through lyrics that are almost incomprehensible, with talk ofscreaming insects and "I went smilingly like a classic obsession"topping the list of sub par nonsense. This, unfortunately, also meansthat they are not all that different from any other Norwegian hardcoreband that tries its cards on this side of the pond. Carheartis a valiant effort, though, and Virus are pouring their hearts allover this record. It just doesn't amount to much that hasn't been triedhere before.samples:
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