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Album Reviews : Volumes – Different Animals

By on June 7, 2017

The thing that strikes the listener as she or he experiences Different Animals for the first time is the sheer, unadulterated variety on display. You may or may not like everything they attempt on this record, but it cannot be denied that Volumes are one of the more open and progressive-minded bands going around, and are jacks of all trades and masters of them all.

Different Animals certainly gets heavy when it needs to. Bookends Waves Control and Left for Dead bring the noise, the pounding, slamming grooves and the rabid aggression, and should keep the metalheads happy. But in between, there is hip hop (On her Mind), pop (Feels Good), hard rock (Pieces), a two-minute pop ballad (Interlude), a strange but compelling piano and string-driven instrumental (Tides Change) and plenty more besides.

Heavy Silence is a unique beast, the type of extreme loud-soft dynamics that this band does so ridiculously well (see the classic Erased from the last album No Sleep for more of this). Oh, after all has been taken into account, Pullin’ Shades is probably the album’s best cut: it is emotional, accessible, heavy, groovin’, catchy as all-hell, and it even has a (brief) lead break!

The vocal transition from Michael Barr to Myke Terry appears to be completely seamless, as Terry smashes out his parts with passion and hits the notes with aplomb.

To label this band ‘metalcore’ does them an injustice. There are some incredible metalcore bands out there doing good stuff, no question, but the term suggests a fairly formulaic approach to songwriting and quite a defined way an album will sound. Volumes operate within no such boundaries. They smash conventions and throw formulas out the window, doing whatever they want, whenever they want, and to hell with what the narrow-minded detractors think.

And that’s what gives them their edge.

Band: Volumes
Album: Different Animals
Year: 2017
Genre: Metalcore / Djent
Label:  Fearless Records
Origin: United States

About

Rod Whitfield is a Melbourne-based writer and retired musician who has been writing about music since 1995. He has worked for Team Rock, Beat Magazine, themusic.com.au, Heavy Mag, Mixdown, The Metal Forge, Metal Obsession and many others. He has written and published his memoirs of his life and times in the music biz, and also writes books, screenplays, short stories, blogs and more.