Khaøs
Khaøs Rising

Four guys, two continents, music without compromise. That is the premise of this EP called Khaøs rising, the promo info speaks of collaborating over the internet and such, not too interesting to be honest and the four bands the four guys comes from aren’t overly exciting either but they have gotten together because they wanted to make music without compromise or as the press info says: “The band name itself reveals the main musical target: to let creativity, musicality and energy flow, destroying barriers and breaking through obstacles. Music itself is the centerpiece of this work” - interested? Then keep reading.

Musically it is not really new: melodic hardrock, maybe AOR with distinctive choruses and a very melodic disposition and as I stated before. Kind of a classic sound to be honest, I wasn’t quite expecting that from a band that breaks barriers and doesn’t compromise. The sound is very good, polished and clean but still with energy and a bit of power as well. One has to wonder in a sense what really was the idea as this offers nothing really distinctively different from what these guys normally do in their usual bands, but this EP is said to be a “taster” of what is coming in form of a full length album. A quite long EP with 33 minutes albeit two of the tracks are duplicates with one regular song and a radio edit, seven tracks in total, five of them regular tracks. Not the biggest of variations over these tracks but they are few so that may be why that is.

This is a decent EP, no masterpiece or anything like that but a good solid effort that is amusing to listen to. Chandler sings better here than in Outloud as well which is good, but at the same time it might be difficult to shake this feeling of having heard it all before. And this is a bit of the downfall of this EP, it does not really feel fresh, new or anything like that. And the thing is that it has been done before, many times, and it has also been done better before which of course makes it a tad difficult to really justify another one of those albums. But at the same time there are some really great stuff on this so maybe they still deserves a chance.

I think the second track Hated along with the third one Reason to Die are two excellent tracks which I really enjoy listening to and the EP as a whole isn’t too shabby either, not fantastic or anything like that but a good half hour of musical enjoyment. The thing is however that it feels mostly like a taste of what is to come, not really something you really sink your teeth into. And to be honest I think that you’d do better to wait for the album this is to tease for rather than picking up this, however if you do pick it up you will probably not regret it too much.