ALBUMS THAT WILL F*CK YOUR FACE OFF IN 2012: ADIMIRON, K2

Adimiron
K2
Label – Bakerteam Records
Release date – January 2012

If writing about a new Gojira album ain’t happening here (the point of this exercise is to expose metal bands on the rise), then I suppose Italy’s Adimiron will do. But maybe that’s a little unfair to say — based on snippets alone, the Roman four-piece sounds loads more interesting than anything I’ve heard from those Frenchies to the north.

Despite releasing two albums prior to K2, I wasn’t familiar with this band until recently. Their official web page describes their sound as “mixing furious Thrash riffs and Progressive/Avantgarde atmospheres with a post-Death Metal touch.” I couldn’t begin to decipher what exactly a “post-Death Metal touch,” is, but it sounds kind of like a mix of Gojira, Alchemist, and Opeth, to me at least.

There are a lot of lesser-known metal groups right now that try so hard to cram every big influence into their repertoire that they end up never really sounding like their own band. There are a few groups that do this very well (The Ocean Collective, for one) and hundreds more that don’t. From what I can gather, Adimiron seem to avoid this pitfall and it’s difficult to specifically pinpoint why.

Vocalist Andrea Spinelli sounds like a dead ringer for Joe Duplantier, albeit, maybe a little more controlled in his weird yell-singing, and there are enough seven-string riffs and mind-fucking rhythms to call attention to some other potential influences. But then the guys will do something wacko, like an Akerfeldtean clean vocal line over a tribal ObZen pattern, and it suddenly becomes hard to compare them to anyone.

There are also some apparent personnel of interest. The record was mixed and mastered by Jens Bogren, and features a guest vocal performance by Annihilator frontman Dave Padden.

I still haven’t heard enough of K2 (or more accurately, been able to get my hands on it…) to see if all of these experiments work, but it seems like a promising piece of work that could really standout in what looks to be a very exciting year for metal.

Listen to some samples of K2 below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMViyYo9udM

-BS