Promoteur, musicien, animateur… Jordon Chatten peut maintenant ajouter « critique à Ondes Chocs » à son curriculum vitae. Le guitariste de Make Haste to Mutiny de London, Ontario, livre sa première critique d’album pour nous, drette là!
« Transcendence »
Independent
2014
Track list
« Observers »
« Continuance »
« Transcendence »
« Presage »
« Tetrahedra«
The Healing is a brand new band hailing from London, Ontario, Canada. They released a pre-production lyric video of a track from the album as a preview, February 2nd, after only announcing the band a few days before. They caught a lot of peoples attention with the quality of recording and the professionalism in how the song was written and arranged. Not only was the song heavy and catchy, but the accompanying lyric video was fun to watch. Filled with cool visuals, previews of the upcoming album art and of course taught you the lyrics of the song! A great preview and kept a lot of people, including myself, awaiting the release of the album.
March 31st a 5 Song album under the name of « Transcendence » was released. The album art very similar to Born of Osiris gives off a spacey, djenty vibe.
Upon hitting play you are eased into the album by a ambient backing track, before being slammed by the heavy guitar chuggs. The vocals come smashing in, keeping the opening track heavy as hell and keeping you on the edge of your seat. The chorus hits, and the clean vocals caught me off guard, but not in a bad way. The cleans are done well, not to high pitched like everyone else these days, and they fit the song quite well! Of course, the song doesn’t let up and its progressively heavy and catchy riffs keep pounding away at your ears. With a nifty little guitar solo towards the end, a lot of aspects of metal have been brought into play. All of which have been used properly, nothing is over done. The opening song, « Observers« , really kicks off the album and makes the listener want to delve deeper into the album.
The second song, « Continuance » starts off with more of a «ballad» feeling. Another backing track starts off the song and the guitars come in with heavy, fast, hard hitting riffs over the piano and ambient backing track adding a new feel that was not felt in the last song. With a soothing lead guitar in the background in perfect harmony with some chugg «riffage», we are trapped in this illusion of floating through space. It is becoming apparent this band is awesome at building up parts. The all clean vocals in the chorus bring back the «ballad» feel, but then breaks down fast, back into one heavy as F@!$ song!
The album title track comes in and is completely different then the other two tracks, keeping the listener on their feet! This song has almost a «Poppy» post-hardcore feel with almost rock like chord/riff progressions from the guitars, held together by a keyboard riff. But then it comes to an abrupt end when the vocals come belting in. Catchy, heavy riffs with an awesome vocal break, this song definitely stands out. The chorus is a nice mix of clean vocals with screams accenting certain points perfectly. The Healing then steers the wheel in a new direction, very suddenly in my opinion, and pulls out an interesting «clean section» before blasting back into an epic climax. I personally think the song should have ended there, but they decided to repeat the chorus once more with a heavier ending to finish the track.
After a subtle and quite ambient intro, « Presage » comes right out and bitch slaps you out of nowhere, then continues to do so over and over again. The shortest track on the album, at 2:35, this song is basically just one long breakdown. It starts off slower and gets a bit faster, then gets slower and breaks back down. This song was definitely designed to stir the pit up! Not the bands usual style in this one,with slim to no backing tracks, but damn it’s heavy!
Here we are, this sounds more like the other tracks. This last track, « Tetrahedra« , is very progressive, with every riff hitting just as hard as the last riff, the heaviness does not let up! Jam packed with ambient backing tracks and lead guitar riffs, it’s hard to not close your eyes and get lost in the music, but the crushing break downs always bring you back and keeps it interesting. This track really opens a whole other dimension.
The awesome structure, a great ability to build parts up and climax them in such an epic manner, only to be complimented by very catchy, progressive, hard hitting guitar riffs and vocals, really sets this band apart from the other locals in the area. As the last song starts to fade off, it leaves you with only wanting to do one thing, restart the album. Be sure to check these guys out and buy the abum on Itunes or Bandcamp for $5 and support an awesome upcoming band!
Jordon
