By Andrew Bansal
Australian heavy metal quartet Elm Street have released their new EP ‘Heart Racer’, a long-awaited follow-up to their 2011 debut full-length album ‘Barbed Wire Metal’. All four members of Elm Street have age still very much on their side and a long future ahead, but they’ve already been playing together for a long time. After being a largely unknown commodity outside Australia for all these years, they finally caught the eyes and ears of many in America through their first tour here in January 2015, and are currently doing the same in Europe. This three-song EP gives listeners a little taste of new material and briefly showcases the band’s musical development over the past four years.
The title track opens the 15-minute EP with an extremely catchy and easily enjoyable melodic twin-guitar riff around which the tune is built, with all other elements falling excellently in place and enhancing its impact further. The vocal delivery is strong and although it’s not a strictly clean-singing style, it gives the music a harder edge, makes the melodies stand out that much more, and the lyrics are easily decipherable. The rhythm section is solid and the guitar solos are expertly crafted, and the same ethos is in place for the other two songs ‘Next In Line’ and ‘Will It Take A Lifetime?’.
As was discovered on the January 2015 US tour, Elm Street present exemplary guitar tones when they play live on stage, and this quality of theirs is even more evident on this recorded material. To fans, the ‘Heart Racer’ EP perhaps comes across as too short, but serves as proof of these musicians’ heightened level of maturity and is a positive representation of the band as a whole. Besides, the splendid cover artwork compensates in plenty and makes ‘Heart Racer’ worth the purchase.
‘Heart Racer’ is a finely crafted mini-set of compositions by a group of talented, experienced metal musicians that deserve greater recognition than what they’ve had in their career thus far. Right up the alley for fans of melody-driven heavy/thrash metal.
Rating: 9/10
Record Label: Massacre
Release Date: May 9th 2015
Track Listing:
01. Heart Racer
02. Next In Line
03. Will It Take A Lifetime?
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