Gone Without A Trace – Self Titled

This is another one of those bands that I’d never heard until Bobby gave me their album. So once again, I didn’t know what to expect, but these guys are pretty good. They sound like a mix of Unearth, Zao,and Sinai Beach, and come off as a dire metal band. The first thing that stuck out in this band for me was the insanely fast beat the drummer laid down. I can only imagine that guy going nuts during one of their sets. He definitely has a double kick, because the beat is so incredibly fast. The guitarists are really good as well, their speed is constantly changing, one minute it’ll be a heavy breakdown, then it changes to a fast paced riff, unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much for technicality or fancy notes thrown in to stun the senses. The vocals are pretty good and the singer sounds just like a mix of Zao and Unearth, but yet it still manages to sound unique. The band just seems to come together very well and the everyone seems compliment one another’s given role. There’s nothing too special about the lyrics, they’re pretty standard as far as metal bands go. They’re mostly about suffering and death, but no use of swears in the place of verbs, nouns, etc. I really enjoyed listening to this, although there were a few things that bugged me. First of all some of the songs have bizarre outros and the intro to the cd is the band playing with noise from a combat zone put in, in the background. But besides that I was pleased, the cd has a good length (32.3 minutes) so I haven’t had to listen to it over and over again in the duration it takes to write this. The songs flow very nicely as well, but the songs can seem to sound similar. It hasn’t really bothered me much yet because there are still very clear distinctions that can be made between tracks.

I really recommend this album if you can find it anywhere. I’m not too sure about expecting anything from these guys any time soon though, Thorp records listed them as an inactive band, which is somewhat disappointing. But, I’m sure if you can find this and you like metal, hardcore, or metalcore, you’ll definitely enjoy what this band has to offer. Hopefully they’ll become active again, unless I’m mistaken and they’re on a different label now. This is yet another digression, get this cd, you won’t be disappointed(disclaimer: I take no responsibility if you are in fact disappointed, it was your own fault for not looking into this band before you bought the cd)