Stabbing Eleven, a metal band hailing from the Dutch province Overijssel. I live there, but never heard of this band. After a couple of runs in my player this album tells me I don’t need to. Modern metal with a hip twist, concerning the samples and riffs. Two vocal styles, one aggressive and one clean. The aggressive vocals sometimes remind me of the vocalist of the band C Of E with some Max Cavalera timbre. The clean vocals are simply not good. Too fragile, it just doesn’t sound convincing to me.

The music also sounds too cliché. It’s like we’re back in 2000/2001 (the years nu metal peaked in popularity). It’s like I heard everything somewhere else already. For instance the third track, “Set For Nothing”. Oh my God, they still use this one riff that has been used over and over by several anonymous nu metal bands.

The song however, has a brutal break in it (coming from out of nowhere) which I can absolutely appreciate. But like I said, it does not really fit in the song. Songs like “Stitched” and “Shallow Point” remind me of the relatively unknown band Unfounded (they released an EP a few years ago). And just like Unfounded, Stabbing Eleven will not reach much with this album.

There are some cool ideas like in “Course Of All”, the first time the vocals sound convincing. A cool line over some double bass. But they just end in too many cliché’s, and anonymous songs. If they really want to improve, work on some original riffs and create some original hooks that do fit into the music.