Band:	BlackBrew
Album:	BlackBrew
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	July 2010

01. Morbid Rage
02. Last Chapter
03. Breath
04. In Loving Memory
05. Society's Whore
06. Black And White
07. I Am The One
08. Why Me
09. Said
10. Conflict Within

The world of metal becomes a sad, confusing place some times. Picture this; some of the thickest, crunchiest riffs you can imagine - up there with the likes of Orange Goblin and Cathedral, but pair it up with horribly embarrassing vocals. It seems we have a conundrum.

Come to think of it, it's really difficult to tell how bad these vocals actually are. The vocal recording is so unbelievably amateur it sounds like a karaoke impression of Lee Dorian. It gets even worse when it comes to ballads, where there is no cool riffs present to carry the vocals. It almost seems they are completely self aware of how bad the lead vocalist actually is, because occasionally they bring in some skilled, yet totally unnecessary female vocals, which, aside from sounding like they were recorded through Guitar Hero microphones, are almost entirely out of place. I can picture the band sounding much better live, which leads me to believe they can chalk this up to piss-poor recording. Besides, let's face it, some of rocks greatest bands are fronted by people who couldn't sing worth a damn, but still managed to make it sound good. That being said, don't sing ballads if you can't sing, the 2 power ballads on here were 3 too many.

But then there's the riffs...Sweet merciful crap these are great riffs! Caught somewhere between recent Orange Goblin and old Black Label Society. It's hard to say whether those bands are an influence on BlackBrew or not, but regardless - this band does appreciate catchy, straight-forward heavy metal riffing...Which (once again) would be much better if the vocals weren't thrown right on top.

It's really hard to make a completely fair judgement of this band based entirely on this one album, as they have some really good ideas (most of the time), with a good chunk of well written songs. Hopefully next time around they won't record it in the bathroom of a greyhound depot.