Inner Core – Soultaker

[schema type=”review” name=”Inner Core – Soultaker” description=”Label: Echozone” author=”Imppu Karila” pubdate=”2018-04-06″ ]Inner Core is a quintet from Lörrach, South-Western Germany, close to the borders of France and Switzerland. They specialize in traditional heavy metal with hard rock influences and that’s exactly what their debut album gives us: melodic female fronted metal with rock-solid attitude.

The album is opened by the title track Soultaker, which doesn’t hold much back in showing what the band is about. We get guitar leads, keyboard leads and accurate drumwork, which melts in together perfectly with the rhythm guitars while synths and Anna Rogg’s voice does the majority of the job.
Followed with Sweet Addiction, we get more traditional heavy, which balances on the ledge of being almost hard rock. This is closer to what the most of the album is, upbeat sing-driven metal, flavoured with synths.
As we get to the 8th track, Monsters, I begun to wonder if this albums never ends. Song after song, we get lots of tension-release, hooks that are creating a sense of dramatics but it gets exhausting before long; especially if almost every song is more or less repeating the same formula.

While the band clearly knows what they’re doing, they don’t offer many hooks to grapple on and the more I listen to the album, the more it loses it’s shine by being immemorable. Also from time to time it sounds like Rogg is trying to take her voice above her vocal range, which results in anti-climatic nose sound. But those flaws are nothing practise couldn’t fix.
The compositions and arrangements are well done, and every instrument has their own place in supporting eachother. Majority of the songs are upbeat which is a good thing but instead of leaving a mark, the band seems to be holding back their capabilities.

Line-up:
Anna Rogg – Vocals
Massimo Giardiello – Guitars
Artur Schall – Keyboards & Vocals
Ricardo Echeverria – Bass
Stefan Zimmerling – Drums

01. Soultaker 02. Sweet Addiction 03. Snowstorm 04. Crucified 05. Keep the Distance 06. Screw That 07. Blame 08. Monsters 09. Ghost Dust 10. Into Eternity

Links:
Inner Core Facebook