The Driftwood Sign
Broken Times

Broken Times is probably not the worst description on the times we are living in with global warming and record heat, massive forest fires, mass hysteria among fascists and nationalists, stupid presidents and many other strange things. Broken minds for broken times, to phrase the title track, is certainly what I think when I see and hear how people neglect big problems that hurt many and enlarge small problems that effect very few. Like the gang problem we have in Sweden, over 25% more people die on their place of work than by bullets in shootings here. But let’s not dwell on that as people fabricate their own realities nowadays and facts don’t matter but I have some for you anyway; The Driftwood Sign is a Swedish band who took form about a decade ago and are now releasing their first album. We wrote about their self-titled EP in 2015 and were very positive towards that and had high hopes for this one as well.

Broken Times is a step up compared with the EP from 2015, with strong soundscapes and a pretty cool dark mood and strong vocalist as well good variation, they give us a quality album. The style is somewhere in the metal genre with many grungy influences, it is quite heavy and while it may not really bring anything really new to the scene it still feels fresh and gives a good sense of novelty when listening to it for the first time. The production is really good with appealing sound and the playing time very sensible – it is probably not wrong to say that the cover gives a pretty good idea of what you will hear on the album.

This is a very good album with strong songs throughout, I like the mood and the catchy nature of the songs – a nice dark catchiness that isn’t overly common in the metal world. There are some hit potential throughout the track list, like the title track which is one that I find very appealing but it is not the only track that makes me want to return to the album over and over. And as the album has no distinct weakness it is very easy to like it and with the depth it has it stands up well for repeated listening, it is an album well worth checking out.

Hopefully they don’t take as long to put together their next album, but if they do it is certainly possible to enjoy this album for a long while until the next one comes around. I don’t think you should hesitate to explore what Broken Times has to offer as it is a fine album that gives hope to our very polarised world and hope for something interesting in the music world can be quite sparse. So, the conclusion is that you should check out this great album, you might regret missing it.

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