Echidna
Dawn of the Sociopath

Portuguese Echidna are back with their second album, it is called Dawn of the Sociopath which is a concept album about what goes on in the mind of a sociopath. That sounds a bit like an exciting concept, and possibly a route to do something that is completely out there musically. With razor sharpness and sledgehammer riffs they are mesmerising their listeners and taking them on a journey through the mind of a sociopath. The band has a new singer as well, a man who’s growls are said to be so aggressive that you, the listener, can imagine the blood spitting out of his mouth. That is one thing I do not find being that interesting to be honest but the reviews I have found has been mostly positive which would indicate that it is a fairly decent album. But then again, the darker and blacker stuff is not quite our forte here at Hallowed, but then again Echidna might be a different story.

Musically they are not as evil and as aggressive as they might appear from the information given with the promo, still they are quite heavy most way through the album. The vocals are mostly growly ones but we have some clean vocals and some spoken word parts as well given what might appear to be a little variation. Thing is though that the variation is not that big through the album, most songs are quite similar although there are some songs standing out as slightly different. The production is competent and the sound is quite powerful and quite impressive in a way. I would say that this album is probably seen as a bit varied if you mainly are a fan of the extremer kinds of the metal genre. Not too much of a fan of the vocals, either of the vocals are uninteresting to me but the growls are quite dull overall. On the album there are eleven tracks of which one is an intro and there are a few interludes as well, it plays for 41 minutes.

I think this album is alright in a sense, if you like extreme metal I am sure that you will like this as it is well made and powerful, for me it is a bit lacking in variation making it into a rather dull album in many aspects. I think though that there are some real and impressive highlights in Obscuring My Reason but even more so in the track called Bloodlust which I think is a brilliant track and here the band turn into a bit more of a melodic metal band rather than just heavy which seems like their main agenda, to be big and heavy and evil.

Also, I do not think the concept comes out well enough, for me the story isn’t being told well enough to keep me interested. This along with the many songs that sound very similar makes the album a bit boring to me. I would have enjoyed it very much had the variation been a bit bigger and also more songs in a style similar to the best ones on the album. I think though that if you do like the more extreme metal I am quite sure that you will like this, it is aggressive, it is heavy and it has growls that some might consider evil as well. But on the other hand they feel a bit unimaginative, they feel pretty much like any other band I would say. This lack of uniqueness effects this album negatively especially as there are traces of great ideas here and sometimes they do show.

Overall though, it is a decent extreme metal album but it fails a bit on too much similitude and that is a bit sad I would say as there are some flashes of brilliance scattered around this album and those flashes are not being done justice thanks to the similitude of the rest of the album.

Lack of variation and bloody growls is the downfall of this album but fortunately there are some parts that I will take with me now that this album is put to rest.