Sortout
Conquer From Within

Metalcore is the name of the game when we are looking at the band Sortout and their second album Conquer From Within. It looks pretty cool, the cover that is, not the band. And as I now write the words of this review text it is quite obvious that this album wasn’t sorted out from the review lists. But was it really worthwhile to listen to the album several times?

Well, there is that ending 30 or so seconds that is very nice, clean and a bit of a surprise. Otherwise it is a fairly predictable album with groovy metalcore tracks, not very varied but fairly modern and the playing time feels quite sensible as well. The sound is modern, and it is good, so let’s claim that the production is good. The growler has a decent gruffness and the cleaner vocals are pretty average, but they work fairly well. There are no surprises, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise as metal tend to avoid that sort of thing.

Solid album with solid songs, nothing really outstanding or fantastic. The ending 30 seconds are the most memorable to me but to make it fantastic the band needs something more outstanding, like a hit song or something similar to that. I think that this album lacks that little extra that the best bands can offer, Sortout has many things going for them but not that little extra.

If you like metalcore I am quite sure that you will find this album quite agreeable, perhaps even good or great. I am not sure that it has any wider appeal though, and the pretty forgettable nature doesn’t help. In the end I think the album is good, pretty enjoyable to listen to – but even so, I cannot help thinking that it would have been wiser to sort it out, not because it is bad but because it isn’t brilliant.

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