SOiL - True Self review
Band: | SOiL |
Album: | True Self |
Style: | Grunge, Hard rock |
Release date: | May 02, 2006 |
A review by: | jupitreas |
01. Fight for Life
02. Give It Up
03. Pick Me Up
04. The Last Chance
05. True Self
06. Hear Me
07. Forever Dead
08. Let Go
09. Until It's Over
10. Jaded
11. Threw It Away
12. One Last Song
Chicago's Soil has long been a source of somewhat uneven music, located somewhere in between Alice In Chains and Down. However, as potent as this mixture might sound, the band rarely pulls it off with overwhelming success, too often allowing themselves to indulge in mediocrity. Although the band now has a different vocalist, not much has changed as far as the quality of their output is concerned - True Self, save for a few inspired moments, is entirely as forgettable as the remainder of Soil's catalogue.
The greatest problem here is the band's over-reliance on cliché post-grunge refrains and song structures. Sometimes this approach works, but very rarely. One such instance is "The Last Chance", which is an excellent song by any standards. Admittedly though, Soil allows themselves to focus more on powerful riffing here than a sappy, overwrought refrain. "Forever Dead" also follows this more successful formula but unfortunately not to as good an effect. By far the highlight here is the ballad "Let Go" though and this is obviously something the band is very good at. Instead of churning out songs that are somewhere in the comfortable middle between aggressive rock and emotional ballad, Soil should really try to separate these two styles and capitalize on their power as single entities. It works every time it's done on True Self but it's simply not done often enough?
On the other hand, the pure performance of all the musicians of Soil is quite impressive. Especially the vocalist offers a powerhouse performance, alternating effortlessly between roaring and a Layne Stanley-like croon. The production is equally powerful so listening to True Self is not exactly a painful experience, even though the songwriting is often sub-par.
So there we have it, a band with a lot of potential but lacking the balls to utilize it fully. With better and more dynamic songwriting, Soil could definitely make some heads turn. As it is though, their music is too safe, repetitive and predictable to really warrant my recommendation.
| Written on 06.12.2006 by With Metal Storm since 2002, jupitreas has been subjecting the masses to his reviews for quite a while now. He lives in Warsaw, Poland, where he does his best to avoid prosecution for being so cool. |
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