Review Summary: Strong musical ideas that will eventually grow into something better with experience.
Forever Never show much of the makings of a quality metal effort, but show there is room for development and growth. The debut
Aporia while has the rhythmic intensity better than most modern metal acts lacks experience and a practiced sound that would overly improve how this album is received and possibly create more attention for the band. Forever Never’s less then in-your-face style may see listeners soon forgetting about them.
Aporia, Forever Never’s debut effort is a mix of melodic lead passages, tempo changes and groove inspired riff work. There is a lot of ‘good’ to be found on Forever Never’s 2006 debut release. From polyrhythms, to screamed vocal lines with added harmony provides the listener with an interesting listen. Twelve tracks long, this record does tend to drag a little around the middle, where tracks sound too much the same and listener therefore loses their attention caused by a lack of overall creativity and musical diversity. Tracks like ‘New Arrival’ and ‘Reversal’ while are quality listens by themselves become ‘filler tracks’ when the album is listened to as a whole. They maintain too many of the albums features without enough creative diversity to engage the listener.
The UK metalheads do have some great tracks that reaffirm their musical prowess to create songs for the live performance. Amongst all of the polyrhythmic beats and changing tempo’s lies a solid set of groove rhythms that fans will bang their heads to. Highlighting this record is ‘Saviour?’ which has a slightly more in your face sound, including the opening scream and tremolo picking across a fast bass drum line. ‘Saviour?’ also makes use of breakdowns and a lengthy bridge section, where the instrumentation takes over and presents the listener with its technical ability. While the album has a discerning lack of melodic leads and solo sections listeners will be pleased with ‘Drowning’ which incorporates both. The solo work is also of significant importance as it livens up the track and the album as a whole.
The musical ideas on
Aporia are both weak and strong, depending on which ideas being talked about. The instrumentation shows technicality and tastefulness, but at the same time listeners will find this becoming bland as the same features and ideas are used repeatedly. The vocals add to the overall diversity of the album with a mix of screams and melodic cleans, but sound under produced and to a certain extent like they were live. Also track placement could also affect how this album is received. If some tracks were rearranged it would better the listening experience and add to the playback value of this debut release.
The title track is very much an indication of what the rest of the album sounds like, especially since it also opens the album listeners will get a feel of the
Forever Never standard.
Forever Never may not be as in your face as other groups and interestingly enough it’s this that sets it apart from acts like Trivium, All That Remains or Bullet For My Valentine.
Aporia is a show of consistent musical ideas that become a little bland. The music itself is solid but sees plenty of room for improvement.
Recommended tracks:
• Aporia
• Saviour?
• This World
• Drowning
