Menace - Impact Velocity

(CD Album Review)

*****

Massive departure for Napalm death guitarist!

Who saw this coming!? Menace is a solo project from Mitch Harris who's day job is playing guitar for Napalm Death. Mitch Harris here handles Vocals, Guitars and Synthesizers while Shane Embury (Napalm Death) and Frederic Leclercq (Dragonforce) both take bass duties and the legendary Derrick Roddy (Hate Eternal, Nile, Today is the Day) of course on drums. I read also Brann Dailor is also involved but I'm not sure to what extent. He may have just done the demos or a couple of tracks.

'Impact Velocity' is an epic sounding album. It's melodic, mellow in places. Mitch has a strong clean vocal, with a massive soundscape, It brings to mind Devin Townsend, Cynic or crack the 'Skye' era Mastodon. Also with the amazing artwork and the Steam Punk imagery the whole package is quite reminiscent of Rush's later day masterpiece 'Clockwork Angels'. Starting with the catchy as hell "I live with your ghost" it's quite up tempo and kicks things off wonderfully. The rest of the album is kind of mid paced.

The tracks are big and spacey and progressive with Mitch's dreamy vocals over the top. The Progressive Metal element is at it's height during 'Seamless Integration' which has industrial drums with a chunky riff backing a spoken word passage. There are also some great mellow songs such as 'Multiple Clarity'. It's a great surprise that a group of musicians that are known for making a hellish noise, well to most people have now made this wonderful album. Granted Mitch experimented with different sounds with Meathook seed and maybe that project paved the way for what's on display here but even still I don't think anyone could have predicted this.

It's a great middle finger to people who dismiss extreme metal and the real icing on the cake is that it's so good! Regardless of who's involved it still stands up on it's own terms. If like me you were disappointed with cynic's new album this year grab this instead. This is a beautiful album and one that can't be ignored by any Metal fan.

Review by Joe Denby