Subztain
Conflict Solution

Subztain is a Swedish band that makes traditional hard rock according to most rules and templates but they do have a few things going for them that makes them different. For one the mix in some shouts, screams and rap in to their stuff and even some heavier stuff - almost to the point of it being grindcore.

This is Subztains first album and this particular album is already well over a year old, which partly is due to the band taking some time to send me the album and partly because I took some time getting it reviewed. So I know the album isn't super new, but since the release the band has concentrated on playing live and getting noticed so they haven't recorded anything new since that makes 'Conflict Solution' outdated either. And with all that formal chit-chat over - let's get over to the review of 'Conflict Solution'.

As I mentioned in the beginning this is pretty much a traditional hard rock album. It has 13 tracks and they come in very different shape and sound, which kind of makes me feel they've done this album over quite some time with very different moods and ideas. However, they'd only played together for one year before doing this album, so you might think "how does that add up?". Well, before getting together as Subztain most of these guys were playing together as Subtopia and had been playing together since 2009. And in Subtopia they had a couple of guys coming and going which might be the reason these songs has come out this way. The recordings, on the other hand, went pretty quick and they recorded the songs in a local studio near their home. However, the sound sounds much better than something recorded in a low-budget cheap studio and the reason for that might be that they later sent the songs to Britain and legendary Abbey Road Studios for the mix and master. I think this was a wise choice as the sound seems quite important for this album, but I don't think it stands and falls with it as the songs in themselves are pretty good too.

There are' however, a few small issues with 'Conflict Solution' and it's mostly due to a whole bunch of small misstakes coming all over this album. We could called them beginner mistakes seeing how this is their first album but with an experienced producer like Chris Snyder on board it shouldn't be that. So maybe it's a budget thing - they couldn't afford better advice and production? Whatever it is there's these small things coming every now and then that feels so weird to me. Like passages in the music and how vocalist Andreas Morlin does his pronunciation and lyrics and even how some of the instruments are mixed together. Maybe Snyder pointed these things out but the band wouldn't listen to him? Or he just didn't do a good job. It might even be so they did this deliberately (but why?) but they mix silly mistakes with share brilliance on this album and when they do this the mistakes become even more obvious. Another thing I feel they could have done differently is the number of songs on this album - thirteen songs and 51 minutes is definitely a few too many. The album is a bit all over the place as well with plenty of songs in many different shapes and no real red thread between them connecting the album in to a unit. I like variation - variation is good - but 'Conflict Solution' lacks structure and that is usually not a good thing. Even the most varied and "crazy" albums need structure to be good because without structure it's just chaotic - and unstructured chaos doesn't add up.

There's plenty of good things on 'Conflict Solution' too. I think most of the songs are pretty interesting and I especially like the songs with longer, extended choruses - like Hold Me, Shine and songs like them. At the same time, though, I also like when they toughen up and gets a bit harder (as long as they stay away from that grinding thing they do sometimes) and also a song like Clearly, where they rap, works pretty good - at least it's easy to notice among the rest. And there are ballads too - like Lock You Up, which is acoustic (at least partly) and also pretty nice. But already now you hear it's getting a bit all over the place and I haven't even mentioned half of the songs. In my honest opinion it's just a bit too much conflict and not enough solution on this album.

So to summarize: it's definitely a debut that Subztain call be proud of, but there are also a few things to work on for the next album. And hopefully a follow up is not too far away considering it's been 16 months since the release already. At least I hope it's not too far away. Definitely approved!

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