Hacride – Lazarus (2009)

This French band took me by surprise with their very diverse sounding music. “Lazarus” is a release that stands out by the uniqueness of the band’s sound, something they have been consolidating for several years. The opening track of this album is a 15 minute epic master piece that serves as a perfect introduction to the musical journey that you are about to experience.

“Lazarus” features many influences from different styles of Metal, but they still have a unique sound that can be called their own. When bands fuse different elements sometimes they take big gambles as to how their album is going to sound. Hacride has created a good album that is never awkward or funny sounding, its straight up in your face sound will hook you since the first few minutes and it wont let go.

While “Lazarus” is not brutal or extremely technical, it excels at engaging the listener, and that is what an album should do. The composition of every track is very different making it hard to summarize what the overall sound of the album is. However their songs have very interesting changes of intensity creating the expectation of what’s next.

The vocals are an interesting mix of harsh screams with some clean vocals that fit the emotions expressed by the music perfectly. I’m not a big fan of the harsh screamed vocals but in this release they are very well laid out and perfectly mixed so they don’t sound over done. Minimal use of keyboards and extra touches to the songs, this adds extra elements for the reader to enjoy.

Overall “Lazarus” is a very good and different album that will hopefully get noticed by more people, and entices bands to go out of their comfort zone and take risks into created good music. I’m definitely looking forward to see Hacride perform live at Hellfest 2009.

Release Date: April 20, 2009

Country: France