KingBanana.net

A Hero A Fake
• Volatile
• Victory Reocords

I am so damned picky about my metal. I cant stand “Job For a Cowboy” yet i love “I Wrestled a Bear Once”. I cant get into “The Human Abstract” but i always catch “August Burns Shred” every time the roll through Portland. You pretty much have to be at the top of your game to get a hold of my attention, And A Hero A Fake are standing on a mountain of retired Sega genesis and super Nintendos wearing power gloves and throwing Atari 2600s at people as they walk by.

Victory was already doing pretty well on the technical metal land war with Between the buried and me, falling continent after continent to their mighty riffage. But to add A Hero A Fake to their roster just pretty much made a nuclear arsenal available. Its rare to find 5 or 4 good musicians who can get together and all play extremely technical fast math parts. I can only name a couple of the top of my head who can do a fine enough job at it to garner my attention, Dillinger Escape Plan are of course the God fathers of the genre, Between the Buried and Me are the time tested composition masters whose albums should be compared more to Beethoven, Mozart, and Wagner than the works of slayer, and Protest the hero were the new kids on the block with an unmatched speed and zest for theatrical vocal lines. Now i can add A hero A Fake to this list and move them into the NKOTB slot.

A Hero A Fake have one interesting addition to the already proven method of double bass, 808 sonic boom, and time signature specific guitar tapping and that is the vocals. At most points on the record you get your Atypical growl voice from the lead singer, but at others you get the guitar player chipping in with clean parts that would be easily found as choruses on any new rise records release. Its a fairly fresh approach to technical metal, you get these booming fast tech math parts and then out of nowhere you get this huge melodic chorus (check the tracks Superwoman and F16 for this).

I am very stoked on this record, its littered with amazing clear delay pedal works as well as the heaviest of heavys (check out the tracks Sinfonia and Terminal for this). These dudes took their time writing this album and the attention to detail shows. Its such and engrossing piece of work as well, its an album that makes you want to hunker down on a bean bag with a 12 pack of Capri Suns and some Totinos pizza rolls and just zone out while starring at a magic eye poster.

Bottom line is if you find yourself digging technical metal in the vein of Protest the hero, Dillinger escape plan, and Between the Buried and me then run your ass down to Kmart and secure yourself a copy of this bands debut album “Volatile”.