BLIND MYSELF – Ancient Scream Therapy

The Hungarian Blind Myself are one of the many promoters of the possible evolution, as some say, of Melodic Death Metal. The band from Budapest has been around since 1995, early on playing Hardcore and evolving to Metalcore with tips of melody. Their first release was an EP from 1998 which is called Horrified By The Sun. Since then they fired out four studio albums. Their latest album, Ancient Scream Therapy, gives them a definite position as a Metalcore band with several influences like the late Soilwork and the movement of New American Metal.

The album’s music is strong and hard in a straight forward kind of way. The riffs are heavy, partially melodic with a lot of groove. The use of growls and raspy screaming is well tuned with the music. The production and the mastering, which were handled by the bass player, Bodnar Peter, indicate a high, technically skilled work.

There are a couple of things about the songs that are quite repetitive on most of the tracks. The major thing is in the vocal section. Most of the choruses are almost the same. First the vocalist sings it with a clean voice several times and then he takes them on with growls and a raspy voice. This element is used too much and becomes expected which makes the songs pretty predictable. Of course it’s not such a bad thing but it can bore some listeners. The, not so essential, thing is excessive use of a poem style of singing, which is practically not singing at all only sort of speeches. For example: “Judgment 2010”, “The Buried Alive Exercise”, and “The Agony Of My Nice Slide”.

The strong spots in the band are the vocals and the guitar sections. The vocalist, Toth Gergely, is a master at work. He has the growls of At The Gates’ front man, Tomas Lindberg, the whining of Obituary’s John Tardy and a nice clean and raspy voice which reminds of the late The Almighty’s Ricky Warwick. All of these varieties contribute to Toth’s success in his singing. Guitarist, Szalkai Tibor, does a great job on the rhythm section, it’s the only section there is on the album. Playing heavy and crushing riffs, that while combine with the power of the bass guitar, help create the basic Metalcore and groove rhythm.

While the songs on the album are more than fair, only three of them made quite an impression. The second track, “Lost In Time” , shows Toth’s great ability with a clean vocals approach. The music work is flawless and has some melodic touches that resembles Soilwork’s Stabbing The Drama. The chorus of the song, utterly, resembles their Figure Number Five release. “Go Get A Life” , is an interesting short track that is actually a suggestion or a reminder for people to turn away from being losers. The track contains some heavy and fast paced riffs along with old school Death Metal grinds and melodies. Finally, the best track of this release, “Illegal Society” that is one of many songs against the statues of today’s society, marches in with a captivating main Punk and Hardcore riff and does the job with excellence. On many tracks there are various interesting rhythms while Toth speaks.

Blind Myself brings to the Metal world a good album with a lot of meaning and mysteries. Their impact has yet to be established, for now they are like many other Metalcore bands. Although this is a fine release, they are still not providing something new to the Metalcore sub-genre which can elevate them above the “crowd”. But this release can help give others a new line of thinking about this sub-genre and that is something that not many of these bands do.