The Uncanny Valley

'The Uncanny Valley' has, I'm pretty sure, nothing to do with the actual Uncanny Valley and everything to do with heavy metal. But this distinction is a relatively minor one. Danish deathrash outfit Koldborn sophomore LP, 'The Uncanny Valley', is a decent if derivative slab of music, despite its lack of connection to the subject of its title. Now, a deathrash concept album about the actual Uncanny Valley, that would be awesome...

But I digress. What we have here is fairly by-the-book deathrash, but this isn't at all to say that it's poor. Koldborn pulls off the style in a heartfelt and well constructed manner, clearly enjoying their music as well as taking care towards its design. After an extremely brief intro, the band dives headlong into 'Lords Of Stupidity', packed to the brim with furious death/thrash riffing. The best comparison that can be made is one to Vader, with a similar style of riffing, though percussion is a bit more dynamic and less streaming than those Polish warriors. The rest of the album roughly follows suit: simple yet catchy and engaging deathrash that most would enjoy.

As far as flaws go, the most obvious one is production. The guitars are much too far forward in the musical space, and possess a strangely saturated tone with too many mids. A nice boost in bass presence would really help this album out; even something as small as jacking up the volume on the bass drums could do a lot to compensate for this lack. However, those forward guitars do let out some pretty mighty riffs that remind one of Krisiun or Angelcorpse quite a bit, with that grandiose, evil sound that the best death metal bands tend to channel. It's not spectacularly original, but it's well composed and an enjoyable listen.

Give Koldborn a chance if you're into extreme metal. I can't say that it will redefine your knowledge of the genre, but 'The Uncanny Valley' is an album I can listen to a number of times without getting bored.

(Originally written for www.vampire-magazine.com)