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"While waiting for the release of the future Tool, take a look at this "Wheel" which has everything you need to wait and stay attached to your turntables long after."
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4/5
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Cool, the latest Tool album is finally out! Well, no, it's not them, but it looks furious. If the Arlesian is announced for the end of the summer (I ask to hear it before I believe it), Music Waves offers Californian fans the opportunity to listen to Wheel's first album while waiting for it to be released.
Wheel is an Anglo-Finnish alternative metal band... à la Tool. James Lascelles emigrated to Finland to pursue his musical career in latitudes more favourable to his aspirations, and founded the group in 2017, surrounded by Roni Seppänen on guitar, Mikko Määttä on bass and Santeri Saksala on drums. After two promising EPs, "Moving Backwards", released in spring 2019, is a blend of progressive, grunge, and post rock. Metal or rock? Both: It depends on the passage you listen to so much that the two mix to form a homogeneous whole, and, after all, it doesn't matter as long as you enjoy it.
Three choice tracks in this album starting with the dazzling 'Wheel' whose tribal percussion intro devastates everything in its path. Santeri Saksal's performance is breathtaking, especially on the two-minute intro, the rest oscillating between disturbing and heavy raging atmospheres. The very varied singing flirts sometimes with Maynard J. Keenan, sometimes with Dave Grolh on the most agressive passages. The Quebec Myxomatosis fan will also discover similarities. Tyrant' draws more towards Riverside with its very present heavy bass and ethereal ambiences, even if the rougher finish refers to the grunge era of the early 1990s. As for'Lacking', which closes the album, it marks a return to ethnic percussion and the coldness of alternative metal of Tool, with large reinforcements of very low tuned bass, sharp guitars and James Lascelles' very expressive vocals. The finale ends the opus in a deluge of decibels that takes its toll by recalling the mythical 46 & 2 of Maynard's gang.
The instrumental "Skeletons" pulls in the same direction, by the cinematographic beauty of its dark and disturbing ambiences. Listening to the other tracks, the attentive listener will be attracted by the prog metal sounds of an incisive "Vultures", and by the contained and controlled rage of "Where The Pieces Lie" and "Up The Chain" that a certain Alice, also in chains, would not have denied.
It is likely that without a certain sound linearity, the album could easily have been able to reach the maximum note as the energy deployed by the Helsinki quartet is so intense and mastered from beginning to end. Much better than a simple hobby while waiting for the still hypothetical Tool album, this Wheel is worth as much for its proximity to the Americans as for the astonishing personality it shows. Their raging album, between shadow and light, where technical mastery, impeccable production, intelligent writing and cleverly worked atmospheres, has everything to become your bedside album until the release of the next Tool, and even much later. - Official website
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TRACK LISTING:
01. Vultures
02. Wheel
03. Tyrant
04. Up The Chain
05. Skeletons
06. Where The Pieces Lie
07. Lacking
LINEUP:
James Lascelles: Chant / Guitares
Mikko Määttä: Basse
Roni Seppänen: Guitares
Santeri Saksala: Batterie
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(0) MIND(S) FROM OUR READERS
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Top of the page
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(1) COMMENT(S)
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READERS
3.8/5 (4 view(s))
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STAFF:
4/5 (3 view(s))
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IN RELATION WITH WHEEL
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OTHER REVIEWS
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OTHER(S) REVIEWS ABOUT WHEEL
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