Mire – A New Found Rain

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The men from the mountains bring big grooves and big melodies to their sophomore release. MIRE are purveyors of the modern era of metal, delivering fast paced and punchy material built of a foundation of grooves and riffs galore. This sound spearheaded by the New Wave of American Heavy Metal bands in the late 90s through to the mid 2000s has been bastardised, co-opted, borrowed and outright stolen in the decade and a half since bands like LAMB OF GOD and SHADOWS FALL rose to prominence, MIRE are also somewhat guilty of this, although not nearly to the same extent as others.

We’ll start with the negatives to get them out of the way, “A New Found Rain” as an album offers very little in terms of uniqueness, innovation or creativity. Almost everything in this record we have heard before, the riffs, the beats, the breakdowns, even the vocal hooks seem familiar. The overall sound of this album may well be much like what we have heard before, and yes it has been done better by others in the past, but perhaps more importantly it has been done much, much worse too.

One of the most immediately noticeable things about this album, is the production job, everything sounds absolutely massive, everything is clear, loud and incredibly well mixed. The tones on the guitars also sound particularly massive, filled with plenty of beefy bouncy low end to add real weight and crunch to the riffs. They also have a really nice sound in the mid -high range, plenty of treble that really cuts through and structures around the weightier low end. Everything in this sounds like it has been done with purpose, ever decision carefully considered with no wasted space and yet still nothing put in for the sake of showing off.

Vocally there is definitely a lot of skill on display balancing raw aggressive power with legitimately massive vocal hooks, the lead into the chorus of “Lightless” showing this to great effect. The clarity of the vocals could be seen as either a strength or a weakness depending on your persuasion. Some would argue that the vocals, despite being technically harsh, are too clean and lacking in some of the dirty, grimy character that so many of us love. Others would say the clarity serves the songs power, whilst the roughness beefs up the aggression without becoming unintelligible.

Overall this is a fine album indeed, there is very little one could find by the way of fault and what is presented is done so firstly with a high level of skill and secondly to a high level of production. There just isn’t a great deal that grabs the attention, once the record has finished listeners will likely find themselves unable to recall much about the album at all, outside of the fact that it was good. Much of what is shown here are things we have all heard before and whilst it is done to a high quality, and is incredibly pleasing to listen to it just feels somewhat derivative, something you can just stick on in the background whilst you work.

There will be lots of people who I’m sure will get a big kick out of this, and probably has plenty of a repeat listen factor for them too, those who want something a little more challenging however may find themselves wanting.

Songwriting: 6
Musicianship: 7
Production: 9
Memorability: 5