Parallel Minds
Every Hour Wounds... The Last One Kills

This band was created by two parallel minds with the idea to create an incredible heavy metal band, not rules would apply and everything. This paraphrasing is from the press material and it had me thinking, what musicians has the idea to create a mediocre band of any genre – that would be a strange goal, wouldn’t you agree? The duo that had this brilliant and probably not particularly original idea were vocalist Stéphane Fradet and guitarist Grégory Giraudo and this French band has now created two albums, the first one was released in 2015.

They are a groovy band; they have the groove from the thrash metal but also the sense of catchiness and melody as well as the style of soloing from more of a heavy metal foundation. Bands like Iced Earth, Symphony X, and Nevermore, even bands like Savatage can be used to create some reference for how they sound. Pretty catchy and energetic with excellent modern sound, so one cannot fault the production of this new album, it is very solid in that regard. The vocalist Fradet has a decent voice that would suit the genre well but I don’t think he sings very well on this album and the vocals are more of an annoyance than a benefit for this album. And for a band that follows no rules it is a very strictly held album with not too much variation and it feels a tad on the long side.

I think that it is a pretty decent album, the sound is really good but you could desire some more exciting songs with more depth and character. I think it is a rather bland album. The main letdown is the vocalist who doesn’t bring the best out of the songs but they could have followed their rule of having no rules to create something a bit more exciting. It is a fairly generic album of the groove thrashy heavy metal style and unfortunately for them it is not better the majority of albums that has been released in the genre.

Perhaps it will be good for those who enjoy this genre but overall it is an album that I doubt will make much of an impact, it isn’t good enough to stand out. It is an okay album and it leaves me thinking that these guys should have been able to make something a lot better than this, it sounds like the ingredients to make something better are there but they fail to combine them into something exciting. So in the end I think that this album is pretty decent but not one that I can recommend.

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