I love a bit of metal. I really do. In among my odd dubious taste in music, metal is the genre that I would listen to more than anything else. Cursed Sun are metal, but are sort of spanning quite a bit of its sub genres. They describe themselves as:
Our music doesn’t really fit into one genre. We’re a bit of thrash, a bit of death, groove, metalcore with some melody thrown in for good measure.
This piqued my interest and when they recently sent me their latest EP ‘The Fall and Rise’ for review it made me keen to hear what they’ve got, so to speak. Lead singer Jones is of Jones and McKeever fame, anyone who has been to a film devour will know them from their witty short films that are produced and shown at an alarming rate. To think that he has this band on the go as well makes me wonder where he gets the time! Anyway, back to the music – Basically he sounds really good, he growls without being incoherent, he sings well in a more gruff style and when it comes to some clean vocals he can do that too. I am impressed. Songs like ‘Psycopath’ remind me of Killswitch Engage with furious double pedal work on the drums, great vocals that range from the guttural to the clean and a sweet, sweet solo thrown in near the end.
The EP kicks off with ‘The Seven’ which starts with a great bass riff and opens up in to machine gun style vocal spitting, backed by some pretty deep backing vocals. The guitars here have a nice groove that keeps the action chugging along and makes for a great introduction to what Cursed Sun do.
‘The Last Rites’ launches in like a battering ram and doesn’t really let up from there. Chunky riffs and tremendous drum action only make way momentarily for the chorus and seems to serve as a brief respite so we can truly appreciate the next section where they ramp it up harder than before. It works well and helps structure the song into an enjoyable listen. Things get epic in ‘Ascension’ as the title suggests. Everything gets bigger, bolder and more grandiose in the finale. It’s like a last show of what these guys can do, they’re throwing everything at the wall and thankfully most of it sticks. The song sounds tight, robust and makes for a satisfying end to the journey. ‘Ascension’ is the last track of the EP and coming in at 6 minutes it’s easy to see that these guys aren’t scared of running out the clock, the shortest track on the EP being ‘The Seven’ at 4:15. The running times doesn’t feel like an issue though, which I feel is a testament of the quality of what they’re putting out.
I thoroughly enjoyed this EP and am away to have a listen to the other EP’s the guys have put out. You can tell that they ahve been together w hile as they sound tight and polished. I look forward to seeing them live too. DEATH TO ALL BUT METAL!
You can see ‘Cursed Sun’ Live as they support ‘Katabolisis’ on the 24th Jan.
