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By RYAN MAVITY
Through most of Stuck Here on Snakes Way by Finnish metal band Omnium Gatherum, I felt sort of like the heroes of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead as they hide from the zombies in the shopping mall. They come at you from so many different directions you never know which one is going to attack you next. It is perhaps fitting that on the band’s official web site, guitarist Markus Vanhala lists among his musical influences: AC/DC, Judas Priest, Dimmu Borgir and … Avril Lavigne?
You cannot accuse these guys of being derivative. Stuck Here on Snakes Way moves effortlessly between every metal genre and subgenre you can think of. There’s thrash (“Into Sea”), power (“Truth” and “Spiritual) and death metal (“Bastard-O”). Hell, they even throw in two softer, moody pieces (“The Snake and the Way” and “Just Signs”) to add a few more colors to the palate. Vocalist Jukka Pelkonen sticks to a mostly death metal growl, but its effective. Vanhala shines on “Spiritual” with nice lead work and keyboardist Aapo Koivisto adds a menacing, horror movie undertone to some of the tracks.
The only problem I had was that the band seems a little too content to just rock out. Songs like “Spiritual,” “Undertaker,” the dual-sided “The Snake and the Way/Into Sea” and “Just Signs” hint at even more complex, daring music. But a few times the band just settles for tracks like “A-Part of God” and “In Sane World,” which are fairly straightforward metal songs. As daring as the group is in some spots, it seems complacent in others.
Nonetheless, Stuck Here on Snakes Way is a solid offering, one that will give metal fans a little of everything. The band puts the pedal to the metal and is never boring. This is a hard record to go wrong with if you are looking for kickass metal with a little bit of brain in there. |
