SABLE HILLS – Odyssey

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7.0

• Band:
  SABLE HILLS
• Duration: 00:31:20
• Available from: 07/19/2024
• Label:

• Rising Empire

Little As I Lay Dying are growing up: to be honest, Sable Hills are not exactly newcomers – “Odyssey” is their third album in almost ten years of activity – but the agreement reached with Arising Empire is an opportunity to make themselves known to the general public even outside the Land of the Rising Sun.
The Tokyo band, strengthened by the arrival of second guitarist Wataru, presents itself as charged as a spring with a melodic metalcore album inspired by the great names of the beginning of the century (As I Lay Dying, Unearth, Parkway Drive, Bullet For My Valentine), in contrast to a scene increasingly contaminated by electronic music in the wake of the success of Bring Me The Horizon.
Songs like the title track, “Misfortune”, “A New Chapter” and “Anthem” on the other hand show that they have memorized the lesson of albums like “Shadows Are Security”, “The Oncoming Storm” or “The Poison”: no keyboard frills or djent-like technicalities, but only Swedish school stop'n'go, solos galore, muscular screams and some clean passages, the prerogative of the newcomer; let's add to the vintage effect also that healthy hardcore attitude nowadays increasingly watered down, to the point that if it were not for some sporadic more modern concessions (“Bad King”, with a lot of “blegh”) could be mistaken for an album released two decades ago.
Not even the guest appearance of Kenta Koye, singer of the more modern compatriots Crystal Lake, shifts the sound coordinates by one iota, while the featuring of Trevor Phipps of Unearth on “A Turning Back” almost seems to represent a symbolic passing of the baton from one side of the ocean to the other.
Compared to other bands from the same country, it perhaps lacks a touch of Japanese folklore (only hinted at in the final “Tokyo”) but, although derivative, “Odyssey” remains an excellent album for those who are nostalgic for the melodic metalcore of the past.