Frontal - Death Eaters

Frontal

Death Eaters

by Fiona Murphy at 26 June 2014, 10:31 AM

Initially, I was really excited about French Death-Metallers FRONTAL when I read the biography accompanying their debut album “Death Eaters” (named after Harry Potter baddies???)

A quote from Radio Metal France compared FRONTAL to influences GOJIRA, TREPALIUM and THE FACELESS.
The band had also represented France at the Wacken Battle Contest, and most tantalisingly, their first ever show was supporting LAMB OF GOD in 2009.
Unfortunately, that last fact is crucial to understanding how the band sounds. FRONTAL have taken far too many ideas from big names including LAMB OF GOD and MESHUGGAH.

Additionally, I also took issue with album opener “Kronos” as the structure of the song sounded really jumbled, not Djent –just a bit off, to my ears.

To be fair to FRONTAL, apart from that opener which threw me, they are perfectly good at playing technical riffs and building big layered sounds.

Randy Blythe comparisons aside, the vocals are strong. This is particularly apparent on the seventh track, “Death Eater”, which oddly enough for a French band had clean Southern Rock type vocal duelling with Death Metal growls. That track stood out for me. Another thing the album had going for it was really crisp production.

Generally I love groove-laden, technical Metal, but sadly, FRONTAL just didn’t do it for me.

There was some good musicianship and nice moments on the record, such as the intros of “At War With Myself’ and “No Pride”, but it just didn’t feel like enough. A real issue for me was a lot of the songs were undistinguishable from each-other.

I just hope they find their true voice soon, as they are a talented set of musicians.