Garfield Steel — Darkness Freedom
For those not in the know Steel Mammoth are crazed a NWOFHM(New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal) band who create an off-kilter ‘n’ crazed tribute to 80’s metal, oh & the band also features members of the mighty Circle. This solo album does have elements of 80’s rock/ metal, but there’s also a lot of other stuff mixed in there too making this very difficult to tie into just one musical genre.
The album features ten fairly short ‘n’ sharp tracks, and these fall between the just over the minute mark to just under the six minute mark. All the tracks here are up-beat, pumping & mostly stomping mix of locked drum machine rhythms, throbbing ‘n’ slightly crazed synth layers, locked guitar riff’s. And this is topped off with Mr Garfield's exuberate & sometime crazed vocals that come across as a mixture of 80’s rock pop singing, slight new wave-ness, and the odd more punky madman moments.
Sonically the tracks are a careering mix of 80’s metal, pop- rock, throbbing outsider synth pop, boogie bound synth rock, electro beat pumped ‘n pounded rockabilly, a few more vein budging electro fired punk/ metal moments, plus a few sprinkle & dabs of psychedelic & noisy texturing. The tracks here are often fairly simplistic riff wise, but Steel adds on layers of quickly electronics, synth & guitar textureing
I’ll have to admit my first few plays through the album left me somewhat underwhelmed, but over a few more plays it started to click with me, and now I find the whole album a rather enjoyable, often memorable, bouncing yet off-kilter ride. Sure it’s not as vital & rewarding as Circle’s work, but this is trying a different more quirky pop rock route than Circle.
So if you’re a fan of Circle and related project this is worth a go…just give it time to grow on you. Also I could see this been enjoyed by those who like the more up-beat moments of outside synth pop projects like John Maus.