Ekotren – Light My Fire

Release date: 05-02-2008; Label: Blind Prophecy records
By: Sabine van Gameren

  “Light the Fire” is Ekotren’s debut album. The American (Florida)
  based band brings hardcore since their founding in 2000. Before the band releases
  this album, they made some damage with their two EP’s “Destroying
  the American Dream”(2007) and “The Tables Have Turned”(2006).

  The album starts quite promising with the title song “Light the Fire”.
  If the complete album would be like this, my fire would be unconditionally expanded
  to an uncontrollable forest fire.
  Though, when my player reached the third song I felt a little bit betrayed.
  The clean vocals take a bit too much the overhand to my taste. In some way they
  tend to be a little bit like typical emo core type of clean vocals, which I
  highly dislike because it doesn’t match the expectations brought by the
  first two songs. The total mix starts getting back to how I liked it more when
  “Nothing Left” is playing. Hearing this song makes me think of how
  a live gig of this band will look like.
  The album closes with the most aggressive song “Chupacabra”. I like
  this song best, the instruments come more to the foreground where in some other
  songs the highlights are on the vocal part.

  Overall, Ekotren did light my fire, but the upcoming forest fire got extinguished
  before it took over the forest. I certainly think I need to see the band live
  though, the impression is made that they overused the vocals on the album, which
  is an element you rarely see when it comes to live performances and since this
  is the only negative point I can mention, I realize that Ekotren is a name to
  remember.

Links:

Ekotren MySpace