Artist: Chainfist
Label: SAOL
Release: 2010
Duration: 50:10
Rating: 1.2/5
Heavy rock, as the synthesis of two worlds might be called, is easy to measure with two different watts. On one side you’ve got the musical body, which has to be steel. The other half of the coin is contributed by the lyrics, which actually have to be endowed with balls, maybe a pinch of nonchalance and arrogance, and it all has to work together in one wrecking package as a single. The first joint product with the fresh and not exactly most experienced singer Jackie Petersen offers a dozen tracks that musically don’t lack fun riffs, but the energy stalls at the lukewarm vocal delivery and the wretched lyrics. By the ideal, Chainfist have actually managed to get really close to Metallica on Reload, and they cooked up the jet fuel straight out of moments of emptiness. The guitar monotony of the duo Michael Kopietz and Tim Madsen is still the least bothersome part, Heidelbach’s drums and Pedersen’s bass also sound pretty organic, but in this full-length foreplay there’s no factor of total satisfaction, and a firm emotional erection is nowhere to be seen, no matter how hard you look. The festering wound of the whole thing is the poor pronunciation and the benign lyrics, which, because they never went through a proofreading round with some English-language grad, limp both in pronunciation and in wretched rhymes. The album promisingly kicks off with Free Me, but after the first couple of choruses you realize that the last the music is stretched over is pretty dry. The songs are quite alike and recall the boredom that Disturbed conjure up in my ears, at least. A brighter moment is the little ballad Stay, which draws its substance from a pool of sadness and weepy aesthetics. Chainfist spent a whole three years getting tempered, searching for the recipe for deep penetration into the hearts and souls of European fans, but the lukewarm puddle of confessional fiascos, bouts of loneliness and unrequited loves is simply banal musical melodrama. Lyrics, my dears, count a damn lot when judging quality. If I can forgive Avanged Sevenfold their wretched themes thanks to good execution, the Danish party-loving quintet is, because of “copy – paste” riffs and hollow ideas, totally out of breath and out of energy. Chainfist bet on catchiness and on burrowing into your cerebral cortex and staying there like a brain cramp for as long as possible. After the theatrical closing of the album, the track SHCHWH, on which Chainfist collaborate with Illdisposed guitarist Jakob Batten, the dreamy metal war of guitars and screaming solos at least in the end soothes the bleeding ears, sore from all the crying, a little.
Let me finish with the strongest positive element of the record: besides the production, that’s the cover art by designer Sazes Gustavo, who has so far added visuals to releases by God Forbid and Arch Enemy. But since music is still listened to with the ears and not the eyes, the arguments in its defense run out pretty quickly. All that’s left is hoping that Chainfist will air out their musical setup or else surrender in the cutthroat fight for survival. Either way, the record Black Out Sunday, just like its name, is merely a call for radical changes, and as for your memory capacity, rather than wasting it on stuffing in the moronic choruses of this attempt, dedicate it to something more useful.
This review was written in collaboration between Rock Hard Slovenija and RockLine.
Lineup
Jackie Petersen – vocals
Michael Kopietz – lead guitar
Braca Pedersen – bass
Tim Madsen – rhythm guitar
Jasper Heidelbach – drums
guest musician:
Jakob ‘Batten’ Hansen – guitar solo on the track SHCHWH
Production
Søren Jensen
Tracklist
1. Free Me
2. Edge of the World
3. Evolution
4. Be a Man
5. Have you Ever
6. Stay
7. In Your Face
8. Show Me
9. Clown
10. Carpe Diem
11. Black Out
12. SHCHWH (feat. Jakob Batten)
