Artas – Riotology (2011)

Featuring a very diverse sound, Napalm Records brings us Artas second full-length release “Riotology”. In this release the band combines everything from Thrash, Death, Groove, and Melodic Modern Metal to create a very diverse sound that while at times it works wonderfully, other times it sounds too chaotic and disconnected.

Having a more concise sound than on their debut album “The Healing”, Artas sometimes seems to jump the gap between ‘real metal’ and Metalcore/core stuff. This will make some listeners fly away from the band, but we recommend you stick around since there are parts and songs good enough to be worth suffering through the ‘core’ stuff for a bit.

Kicking things off with “Fortress of no Hope”, you will notice the Thrash and Groove Metal influences immediately in the catchy opening riff, then it transforms into a Thrashing anthem that changes shape a few times. While we think that the band does a good job in weaving genres like this, we still think they need some more time before it sounds just right since at points it sounds too convoluted.

With 16 songs and over one hour of music, there are plenty of highlights and moments where we found ourselves fully enjoying this album like on the songs “No Pasaran”, “Ashes of Failure”, “Le Saboteur” and “A Martyr’s Dawn” (very good Melodic DM-style song by the way). But some other times we wanted to kill ourselves with the Core/Groove abuse of other tracks. We have to say that seems like the band is trying to appeal to too many people at once and need to focus more on a unique style with less of everything.

On an interesting note, the band uses several languages over their songs including English, French, Spanish and German. This allows some tracks to sound ‘funny’ and make you pay more attention to then, being a gimmick or not, we kind of enjoy this from the band. The vocals are a nice mixture of screams, some growls, and clean vocals that are more traditional of Groove and Modern Metal releases.

In general, we think that while “Riotology” is not a bad release, it’s a bit far from being great. The band’s musical skills are undeniable since the riffing, solos and drumming are all very good, but they seem to need a bit of musical direction in order to be more effective and craft a sound that is cohesive and helps people identify the band.

Release: January 28th, 2011 (Europe), February 8th, 2011 (North America)

Country: Austria