Band:	Anorak
Album:	My Own Haze
Style:	Nu metal
Release date:	2009
A review by:	Jeff

01. Lift Up
02. Some Skirts
03. Legs Feel Heavy
04. On A Plate
05. My Own Haze
06. Human Sponge Story
07. Kids Of God
08. A Kind Of Oversized Empathy
09. Last Breeze
10. Littlesweep

France has ever been a land of true Hardcore, and this music here has its own influences and rules. Personally I never find any real interest into these French bands, their musical orientation being too "Nu" Metal in the spirit. Fortunately, some people here know what good Hardcore is and we can even find, some time, some good combos in this scene. One of them is called Anorak and their first album My Own Haze is definitely a great discovery, especially if you like crazy and dense music!

If you're into Coalesce, Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan, My Own Haze was probably made for you! Obviously those three bands are the main inspiration of the members of Anorak and they tried to do the same kind of music. This is well done all in all, maybe a bit too much influenced by those three really respected bands but cool nonetheless with good ideas and good songs. If you like crazy riffs and totally unstructured songs, you'll like a lot the album. Each tracks is violent and aggressive and goes in a dozen of different directions with breaks every 20 seconds and rhythms change after each new verse. This is complex, not really easy to understand but the angriness and violence of the vocals with the power of the riffs give a certain catchiness to the music of Anorak. This is not basic "two steps" Hardcore and more something Progressive if I can use this word but for sure the people who likes this kind of music will like this release. No doubts about it!

The performance of each musician is really good. The voice of the singer is powerful and violent, the bass and guitars give a real complexity to the music and the double bass drum is damn effective. Actually I didn't find any real problem in this album but maybe that Anorak still lacks a bit of personality. I mean that ok the album is good but it clearly sounds like the music of the bands that I gave at the beginning of this review. This is not really problematic too because it's well done at least and it's different of what 80% of the French Hardcore bands do in general but I hope that Anorak will find a way to add something new to their music in the future!

Amateurs of technical Hardcore, I invite you to listen to My Own Haze. This release is really well done and Anorak proves that frogs can do good Hardcore! I will listen to again this album because we have quality in this release so if you like this kind of music, do like me and you'll discover an interesting newcomer!