The Syndicate Of Sound

Featuring, perhaps, the coolest pen-and-ink album cover art since BOC’s debut, or maybe their Secret Treaties album, the killing machine splayed across the front of Sonic Syndicate’s Only Inhuman is no ordinary housefly. Outfitted with ‘40s-era airplane props, air-to-ground missiles, various arcane antennae and vintage Millennium Falcon-styled lasergun turrets, that’s one bad mama-jamma…and it’ll take more than your typical flyswatter to rid the house of THAT pest....

The sound of Sweden’s Sonic Syndicate is somewhat like the technologically-mutated creature portrayed on the cover of Only Inhuman. A laboratory-bred patchwork Frankenquilt sewn out of Swedish death metal roots, Cali-styled hardcore fury, European melodic rock and Goth-inspired hard-knocks atmospherics (Opeth, not Evanescence), Only Inhuman has a little of everything for the aggro-rock fan and, like that damned fly, it’s hard to get it out of your head once it starts buzzing around.

Twin vocalists Richard Sjunnesson and Roland Johansson spit lyrics like motor-mouth MC’s on “Battle Night” at some unnamed urban wasteland dive, the pair alternating between Cerberus-styled guttural growls and lofty, wistful flights of vocal fancy. The other two of Sonic Syndicate’s three – count ‘em – three Sjunnesson brothers (that would be Roger and Robin) provide the six-string pyrotechnics for Only Inhuman, kicking out large, if not groundbreaking riffs that are punctured by the occasional icepick solo. Distaff (and good looking) bassist Karin Axelsson plays well off of drummer John Bengtsson, the pair providing the band with its essential underlying sonic backbone. The bass is heavy and solid and seldom gives, standing firm like a concrete highway divider, while the skinman pounds out staggering rhythms with a minimum of blastbeats (thanks, dude!).

“So, O’ Great One!” you ask, “what about the damn songs?” While brick-brain extreme metal fanboys might well turn up their pierced-and-metal-encrusted noses at Sonic Syndicate’s…ah, shall we say, “poppier” moments…the truth is that these young Swedes rock like a San Francisco earthquake, and similarly bring down the house. Tunes like the blistering “Psychic Suicide,” the unrelenting “Denied” or the explosive “Unknown Entity” all combine radio-friendly song structure with metallic thunder, “screamo” styled vocals (think Victory Records) and accessible lyrics that appeal directly to the heart of the band’s demographic.

Like it or not, aging headbang graybeards have to accept the fact that Sonic Syndicate is the face of modern heavy metal. Melodious without ever falling into the chasm of fatal vanilla sound, electric, loud and youthfully enthusiastic, Sonic Syndicate will grow on you like a bad haircut, given half a chance.... (Nuclear Blast Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Only Inhuman from Amazon.com)