Tag: Mindshift

Interview with Mindshift

Mindshift Logo

Mindshift’s latest album Horizon is a thoroughly enjoyable slab of modern Metal, taking in both soaring, melodic choruses and crushingly heavy grooves. They’re definitely one of the more engaging bands that play this style, and I urge you to give them a listen if you haven’t done so already. The time seemed right to find out a bit more about this Swedish machine…

Introduce us to Mindshift!

Metal band based out of Stockholm, Sweden, that has been around for about 10 years. But the last 3 years has been sort of a turning point for the band where we have found our sound and started to see the band’s full potential.

For the moment a three piece that consist of Marcus ”Mao” Uggla (Vocals), Johan Lund (Guitar) and Fabien ”Fabz” Perreau (Drums).

What are your influences?

When it comes to writing the music and lyrics for Mindshift, we are influenced by day to day things, current events in our lives and around the world as well as listening to a lot of music. Bands like Killswitch Engage, Soilwork, Metallica, Architects, Heart Of A Coward, Machine Head, Periphery, Meshuggah, Whitechapel, Memphis May Fire, Gojira are constantly on rotation.

Name five things you’ve listened to recently that you’d recommend Continue reading “Interview with Mindshift”

Mindshift – Horizon (Review)

MindshiftThis is the second album from Swedish Metal band Mindshift.

Mindshift’s latest album is 56 minutes of downtuned aggression in the Metalcore style that pushes the tried-and-tested style of heavy verses and melodic choruses, à la Atreyu, Killswitch Engage, Soilwork and the like.

The singer’s harsh voice reminds me of the singer of Atreyu, and he provides a good performance for the most part. The clean vocals do what they’re here to do, with decent melodies and hooks, some of which are really quite tasty.

The songs are, overall, a bit heavier and more aggressive than some that play this style, which I like, although the radio-friendly choruses clearly show their aspirations.

Although this style has been done to death, with some catchy choruses and good songwriting this is still an enjoyable release if you’re partial to the style. I probably would have loved this about 10-15 years ago. Nowadays I still quite like it, mainly due to the fact that it’s done well and sticks to basic song structures that are as familiar as they are pleasing in their simplicity.

Despite all of the things that are stacked against a band playing this style, I like that Horizon doesn’t play it completely safe and doesn’t just take the easy option of completely regurgitating stuff that’s been done a million times before. This is mainly down to the guitars and clean vocals – the former sound like a lot of consideration has gone into their structuring and layout, while the latter really do add a lot to the tracks and are performed with a passion that’s apparent.

There’s some good riffs and emotive melodies knocking about here too, and the electronic component to their sound is infrequent and used lightly, adding what is needed to the songs without getting in the way.

Ultimately Mindshift have put together an album that is easy to sit back and enjoy. The decent riffs and vocals do their job well and the songs pass by in a quite personable way. I can easily imagine myself listening to this a few more times in the future, despite a slightly over-long playing time.

Have a listen and check them out.