LAZARUS

There is some fantastic stuff here from an up and coming French metal band. Nothing groundbreaking but a damn sight better than most, good solid songs with room to breathe and progress. If you like heavy progressive music then this will put a big smile on your face; like and energetic "Gojira" or a chilled out "Between the Buried and Me".

Track 1 'To Walk Among Them' is probably the most impressive on the album running at a delightful 15 minutes with a great deal of movement and variation, almost an albums worth of ideas in itself. The album continues at a high quality with high energy. Track 4 'Phenomenon' arrives as a welcome breathing point, a very chilled instrumental which begs to be turned up; its greatness is due to is simplicity. The remaining songs are varied and excellent and round off the experience nicely.

The world of music is a better place because of bands like Hacride, the music is honest and the emotions shine through as real ones when many other progressive metal bands sound as raw and natural as tupperware. It's not perfect and won't be for everyone but if this is a sign of things to come then I can't wait for their next album. France is leading the way with heavy progressive music.

3.75. Hacride's Lazarus: solid, powerful, complex, intense. But not groundbreaking, the fifth star being for "originality", even if the album is far from being dull or déjà-vu.

Onto the music. The music generally is progressive death metal. Clean and growling vocals (French accent still audible :) ), effiscient drumming, quiet bass, and great guitars, although they sometimes drastically lose thickness (so bass and drums are turned up to compensate...). The riffs are curshing and punch right out, but what follows isn't always brought up correctly... Some superb moods during the album, you simply get carried through. Variations of ambiances and sounds, mixing soft and hard sound.

'To Walk Among Them' is the giant that serves as an opener. Clocking in at 15min, it gives you directly what you need to know for the rest of the album. Construction, uncountable riffs, complexe but coherent, even if it's quite linear. 'Act Of God' is your metal second track. After you've taken in 15minutes of violence this track is the small pill (6:44...) with the big effect. Kicking in with a headbang, and then heading right into the pit of deathcore hell. And a nice ending theme. 'Lazarus' is a well constructed progressive track. Heavily influenced by Meshuggah, the song is a crafting of moods that carry the "brutality" through the track. 'Phenomenon' is the shortest on the album and weirdly, is song with the longest 'clean' passage (2:03). A mellow metal song, that gets a bit boring. 'A World Of Lies' continues the work of started with tracks 1 and 3, plus great vocals, and some more original riffs. A good surprise at this stage of the album! 'Awakening' is closer to the likes of Nemo, Dream Theater or The Mars Volta, for the first 3 minutes, and returning to a more 'death' sound afterwards. The ending sort of blends these 2 parts, in a quite enjoyable way. I didn't like the quirky bass work 6:50... 'My Enemy' completes the album showing us that Hacride chose to interlace 'week' and 'strong' tracks. It's a bit rawer at the beginning, close to Mastodon. but giving in to a fine progression of a variety of moods and riffs, and ending weirdly on a chorus V 7 chord. Why not...

Still a great album, enjoyable, crushing, and sometimes suprising.

A band that could be said in the same breath as Meshuggah and Gojira (they share the same homeland as Gojira) Hacride is another powerful heavy force to be reckoned with,only i think they add a lot more atmosphere and feature a lot more polyrythems than said band (Gojira). We open this fantastic album off in style, a 14 minute epic TO WALK AMONG THEM i love the multi layered accoustics and awsome riffing by the guitar player of this band, the only thing im not too keen on is the vocalist Samuel Borreau, in my opinion his vocals just arint that strong and he kinda lets the band down at times but apart from that the song is fantastic, other great songs include the title track LAZARUS, A WORLD OF LIES and the losing track MY ENEMY, all in all a very solid effort from this French band and a fine add to any metal fans cd collection;

To Walk Among Them - 10/10 Act Of God - 9/10 Lazarus - 9/10 Phenomenon- 8/10 A World Of Lies - 10/10 Awakening - 8/10 My Enemy - 10/10

MY CONCLUSION? a very worthy release perfect for fans of any type of metal, high recomendation :)