Drowned in Flames: Save Yourself (EP)

HARROGATE four-piece metal band Drowned in Flames make the sort of sound that makes you want to floor a house with your bare hands - or invade a small country.
I once described their drummer David Colston as the most exciting I’d ever seen in Harrogate, arms flailing, bass drum pounding, conjuring up a rattling, rollicking storm at one of DJ Trev‘s Bottom of the Bottle nights.
That was in the days of their first demo back in 2006 when the band could be awful or brilliant, sometimes in the space of a song.
Time and experience has taken away a lot of that unpredictability - and some of the excitement of that unpredictability.
What has replaced it on this new EP is something slicker and more focussed - the finished article.
The thunderous, drill hard aggression and growling vocals remain, as does the mix of grunge-pop chord structure married to thrash metal energy and rock lead guitar.
It’s just done better and tighter with their biggest previous weakness, the singing, now replaced by impressive call and response vocals by dual frontmen Niall Macdougall and Craig Gordon.
All the band lack now is one quirky spark of originality, that killer tune, though there isn’t a bad track here, not opener Save Yourself, closer I Am The Destroyer nor, my favourite, Another Day In Hell.
When the track breaks down after two minutes 43 seconds into a showy, stop-start section, then at 3.34 min breaks out into a fast-paced, fuzzy, melodic guitar solo straight from early Smashing Pumpkins (or Queen), all that granite hardness softened by a hint of lushness, Drowned in Flames make you believe a marriage of the hardcore and the mainstream lies just the other side of the mountain.

Graham Chalmers

PS I haven’t mentioned bassist Arran Johnson anywhere. Sorry, Arran.
www.myspace.com/drownedinflamesrock