So Strapping Young Lad, Mnemic, and Orgy walk into a bar (stop me if you’ve heard this one). Those three bands are, in a nutshell, what you get when putting Sybreed’s The Pulse of Awakening through its paces.

The brunt of the band’s sound is Strapping Young Lad’s manic industrialized and speedy chugging mixed with some high-pitched scream-singing and hard, angry growls. The Orgy influence comes to bare when they go all “new wave” and start singing and adding electro-drum beats behind the guitars. When these two elements meet simultaneously, you’ve got Mnemic. Derivative? Yes. They do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Is it good, though? Good question.

Tonally, the guitars are very raw and sawy, with plenty of cab-reverberating chunkiness on palm mutes. To be honest, you’ve heard this sound a million times. Just pick up any Mnemic, At the Gates, In Flames, or Heaven Shall Burn record. Nothing new here. It’s still done well, though. The drums (when they’re real) are very fast and keep up with the music well. Vocally, at least on the growls, everything is as it should be. There’s the slightly-obvious Swedish accent and the low, angry bite we’re accustomed to. This is all ruined, however, when vocalist Benjamin decides to start singing. They’re strained, off-key, and just plain annoying. To make matters worse, this singing/scream-singing occurs entirely too often. I can appreciate good scream-singing (Mr. Townsend, I bow to you) and even heavily-accented scream-singing (Mnemic) but this is so grating, so annoying, it just kills the experience. The band’s older material (which is growl-heavy) is much more tolerable than what they’ve produced on The Pulse of Awakening simply because they err to the side of growl more often.

The Pulse of Awakening is not terrible, but it’s not good; and in a genre full to the brim, I don’t see much headway being made here, and it’s a little disappointing.

2.5/5