13Even is a new Nu-metal band -Taproot, Lost Prophets-style- from Philadelpia, consisting of five members, and boy, are they being pushed! The nice people at Dangerous Entertainment mailed me ‘Handshakes and Casualties’ directly from the USA itself, a glance at the booklet tells you they also have a DVD out, and last but certainly not least this is an enhanced CD! Yes, indeed, one of those you get to smack into your CDROM-drive, and has all kinds of extras (lyrics, videos, pictures) on it. Be that as it may, are they then worthy of their royal treatment? Well…pretty much, actually.

The CD starts of with a pacey, aggressive song, that sounds like a great mix between some true hardass metal and Taproot-style Nu-metal. When listened to closely, you can even, far away, discover somewhat Alice In Chains like singing. Nice. It is obvious this album has very good production.

From there the album evolves, with more clean singing and less of the grunt-like voice. The song ‘Third day gone’ steals the first two chords (of the chorus) of Incubus’ song ‘Wish You Were Here’, but furthermore sounds does not sound familiar. ‘T.R.O.B.A.’ features some really curious vocals and rhythmic touches, which work quite well with the rest of the music.

Number six and seven are more melodic and maybe even a little poppy, but not in a bad way, although I did kind of develop a strange itch during the chorus of ‘Shackles’.

A song that luckily turned out to be not at all like the candy-ass pop-hit (‘I just wanna Praise You!, blablabla`-crap) a couple of years ago. ‘Drown’ speeds things up again, and ‘Relaxed’ finishes of the CD in Taproot-style, really, really Taproot-style. A very melodic and emotional song, without being too whiney (is that how you write that). Very good song. Just when you think it’s all over you hear an annoying answering-machine message, which is followed up by a good ‘Life of Agony’-like cover of the song ‘Boys of summer’, by Don Henley.

Add it all up and you got yourself a very well-crafted debut album (although maybe a bit short). All the parts the songs fit together really well. If you like Taproot’s ‘Welcome’-album, Incubus and Lost Prophets, you can’t go wrong here. So is it all very original? -No, it isn’t, but with this genre, maybe we should judge bands more on quality and less on originality. If you do that, you’ll find no real weaknesses on ‘Handshakes and Casualties’. The five of them play their instruments very well, the songs are well-composed and they manage to hold your attention during the whole album. A sign of good work.