RESISTANCE – Patents Of Control

It all depends on personal taste, of course, but all know a few labels where you’re are always open for a new release, even if you know nothing about the band in question, right? For many MER listeners, one of those labels is Lion Music, as they have cultivated a general style for their (at least for non-instrumental!) releases where one knows what you’ll get, and where the albums always have at least a decent level of quality. Resistance is no exception to that rule, and it is always worth checking out a new Lion Music release to find that they did offer fans an above average Metal CD – again!

So, to recap a bit of the band’s history: Resistance are from Los Angeles, California, and they play a mixture of Power Metal with occasional injections of Thrash and Prog Metal. As said, almost typical Lion Music stuff. Patents Of Control is their second album after the 2004 debut Lies In Black, and apart from the fact that a new guitar player has joined the band, also there is an improvement in songwriting skills that is obvious almost throughout the album. In fact, so much that in its best moments Patents Of Control has no competition to fear.

Resistance’s Power Metal backbone manifests itself in crunchy, heavy songs with a definite sense for a vocal melody, played and composed tight and playfully. Almost all tracks are around four to five minutes long, enough to fit in a break or two, change vocal styles, but not become too diverted from the goal. Singer Robbie Hett has a great Power Metal voice — still it sounds as if he hasn’t reached his full potential yet — and the contrast of clear, melodic Power Metal vocals and Thrash shouts give all tracks a heavier edge than usual in his genre. With compositions like the opening track “Inhumanation,” “Cerebral Screams,” “The Cleansing,” and “Technochrist,” the band taps demandingly on the door to the Power Metal olympus for entry.

The riffing is also remarkable on every track, and if one needs further characterization, the band could be described as a mixture of Metal Church, Iced Earth, Nevermore, and Judas Priest with an occasional splash of Into Eternity. Sounds weird? Not at all; sounds great! However, every song is rather diverse, and entertaining, so that it is not so easy to put a label on the sound and songs, which indeed is high praise for a band for their second album.

On top of the music, the album has a lyrical concept about near future abuse and means for mind and behavioral control of citizens. Stuff for which patents actually exist today! The main character strives to create the perfect society, a world with no hunger and no poverty, but is that really the desired New World Order? And what if somebody else can make use of the same tools and means, but with a radically different agenda?

Among all the praise for the album and the tracks cited, among the eleven songs are three that don’t live up to the overall level of brilliance: “Confession Of The Blackheart” sounds erratic and pointless and is the only track definitely worth skipping, while “The Alpha And The Omega” with its disharmonies and weak choirs along with “Mirrors Black” — a song which seems to be too long — are still okay, although they draw the overall chemistry of the album downward. Especially so because two of those tracks end the album in an undeservingly mediocre way. And, another point of criticizm must be voiced, which is that many songs are created under the same blueprint. While each track is diverse and progressive, the album is of one style, up to a point where you can anticipate the course of a song even when listening to it for the first time. On the other hand, that is true for half of all albums released every month, so the band should not be judged too harshly for that.

That leaves eight great tracks – which is enough to fill a complete album, and other bands might have just stopped there! And, for that, nothing less can be recommended but a purchase, especially as the band streams six songs on their Myspace site including the criticized “Mirrors Black,” so everybody can get a good impression of what to expect.