Source: Album Artwork
With the notable success of both Within Temptation and Delain, you could be mistaken for thinking that the heavier stuff creeping out of The Netherlands comes with its own customary string quartet in tow. Metalcore five-piece The Royal duly expel any such notion with their merciless second album, Seven, offering up something a little more demonic, than symphonic.
Leaving any hints of subtlety at the door, ‘Thunder’ sets the precedent with a ’start as you mean to go on’ barrage of punishing riffs. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is an entirely one-trick collection of tracks, though. Sure, tunes like ‘Wildmind’ and ‘Life Breaker’ may not stray too far off the beaten track, but with the introduction of some delicate acoustic guitar, tactfully-placed gang vocals (and even the occasional handclap during ‘Creeds & The Vultures’) The Royal muster a bout of variation often neglected in this genre.
Things aren’t always so vociferous, and an opportunity for respite is afforded with a chromatic, haunting interlude that Alfred Hitchcock would have bitten off hands for. Give it just under three minutes however, and you’re soon slung firmly back into the flames with the album’s title track, serving as arguably the most savage of these eleven songs.
Boasting a fair old set of pipes, vocalist Sem Pisarahu’s menacing barks lyrically hark back to the everyday struggles of modern life, managing to channel some inner Corey Taylor on the ferocious ‘Feeding Wolves’, as well as gifting us one of those modern ‘bleurgh’s – one for the millennials perhaps.
More often than not, a flurry of beatdowns and convoluted double kick pedal can fall painfully foul of mediocracy, but if The Royal can continue with and expand on their more grandiose side, they’ll soon be delivering what they need to differentiate themselves from the rest. Seven is a solid effort dispatched without compromise and one that could well propel them into new and exciting territories.
