There’s something to be said for a band wearing their influences proudly on their sleeves. When it’s done with some finesse, and with the band pushing those influences in new directions while adding their own unique flavours into the mix, the end result can be an exciting one.
Unfortunately, Hungarian metal crew Ektomorf display their influences with no such finesse or real progression – and so it proves once again with new album Retribution.
Indeed, tracks such as Ten Plagues (or Roots Bloody Roots?) or Watch Me only go to cement those long-held Sepultura/Soulfly clone accusations, while neither the forays into clean vocal passages on tracks such as Numb And Sick and Lost And Destroyed or an occasional vocal delivery scarily similar to that of Machine Head’s Robb Flynn on tracks like opener You Can’t Control Me do little help.
While Retribution is well produced and everything’s performed well enough, in the end it simply doesn’t offer anything beyond what we’ve heard from Ektomorf before, or indeed what the bands that influence them continue to do so much better.
