Machinae Supremacy - Overworld (CD)

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Overworld managed to confuse me from the very first time spin. At first I laughed, but then I started to like some songs, even though I was listening the album in my car during a traffic jam! Then, when I got home, I listened to a ballad-like song and changed my mind again.  But now, after listening to the album for the third, let's say, time, I think I have the overall picture about the album.
But first of all, a small bio for MACHINAE SUPREMACY, that, to tell you the truth I wasn't aware of it's existence until now. The band comes from Lulea, Sweden and their story begun back in 2000, when Robert, Kahl Hellmer (bass until 2005) and Jonas joined forces. Just after Tomas and Andreas joined the band, they started recording their first songs. During those years MACHINAE SUPREMACY managed to become quite well-known via file sharing, since they published their songs through their website. Between 2004 and 2006 they produced three albums: Deus Ex Machinae, the self release Jets 'n' Guns Soundtrack, for the same-titled computer game, and Redeemer. So, after two years  their third album Overworld hit the stores.
A strange album, indeed. Fans of 8-bit sounds and Comodore 64, you will find familiar sounds in this album! The band calls its style SID Metal. Why is that? Well, because they are using SID! If we have to describe their music in a way, I would say that MACHINAE SUPREMACY is playing Power Metal but not as happy as EDGUY or GAMMA RAY (the proper expression would be Dark Power Metal) with a video game aesthetics. Either you'll like it or not, you have to admit that it is original. Most of the times, the 8-bit sound are nicely combined with their catchy riffs; just listen to Need For Slave. But even though the album starts with two really good songs, the rest of the album is not at the same level. The song that drew my attention with the title was Sid Icarus; hoping that it has something to do with he 1987 NES game Kid Icarus. But the vocals fails me… I was expecting something different especially for that song.
Overall, Overworld is not a bad album; it has some cool songs and some nice ideas that unfortunately are, in my humble opinion, buried underneath naive vocals and the same nu-metal parts with 100.000 other bands. But, they earned some points because they are trying to do something different. At the end, this is an album that's worth checking it out, especially if you like modern and Power Metal.