Thy Row
Unchained

I wouldn’t say that the debut album by Finnish band Thy Row looks very exciting, neither does it appear so when reading the press material but considering that almost all press releases look the same and are all uninteresting it is hard to say anything from that. The band has an EP since earlier, an EP that was relatively successful for them so they probably have hopes for the album now. One might think of the album as it could be fragmented considering the bands listed as similar, but it is actually a bit too coherent instead.

Classic and straightforward heavy rock/metal with a singer that sounds like Finnish hard rock singers often sound. It is quite simple and heavy, strong choruses, kind of like we often hear withing the genre. It would be wrong to claim that these guys offer anything that we haven’t already heard, the paths they take are well travelled and the tricks are tried and tested by a multitude of artists already. It is like they don’t really dare to be different, or dare to stand out – it is one of those albums that sounds like everything else. It is well-produced, the playing time relatively sensible and the music well-performed.

But it feels like a lazy album, lazy composing with stuff borrowed from others, and also a bit lazy that they don’t dare to go bananas in the studio either. In most regards there isn’t much to complain about when it comes to Unchained, but the ideas, where are they? Where is the creativeness? What’s the point? I ask when I listen as this album really doesn’t do anything for me. It is like the store, hotel lobby, elevator music that is just neutral and inoffensive. It is a dull album; the cover should have been beige or grey with a bored face on it instead.

The problem is not that this a poor album, I rather prefer bad albums to all these indifferent ones. It is so hard to try and write about something that makes no impression, and these albums are in a majority these days. To me this album seems like one where the band is looking more to avoid failure than actually trying to make something great. And that means that you will do very well without this one, it is hard to motivate why anyone should bother with Unchained, a very bad title for an album like this as well.

 

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