Estonian band, California Condor have just released their latest single, Illuminator.
For fans of Industrial Metal and rap-rock, this is for you. I was reminded in places of Linkin Park here. This is super-heavy stuff with absolutely tons of great attitude.
The rhythm track is particularly well played. The drums and bass lock in well together and carry the song along.
I’m really taken with the strong and powerful guitars that keep the listener intrigued all the way through.
There are brief moments of respite (for want of a better word) where the guitars just kind of swirl around in your ears, and the vocals are a little more gentle before blasting back in with full battle cry anthemic power.
This is really well conceived, cross-genre music that manages to comfortably blend doom metal, hardcore rock and rap. Not easy to do, but California Condor do this effortlessly. I bet they are just superb to watch live.
For me, I’d consider a bit of a remix on the track. It almost feels as though the vocals were added way later than the instruments and therefore they don’t quite sit right in my opinion. I struggled to hear too many lyrics, although I did hear enough to figure out its probably not a radio friendly song!
I’d look into ducking the vocal track to the instruments, or heavily compress the vocal track. I just felt that in the heavier sections the vocals were a little too lost, and honestly, if you can sing doom metal that convincingly, you really shouldn’t be in the background!
Illuminator is a remarkable, fresh, cross-genre anthem that oozes confidence and power and is certainly likely to do well in the Metalcore community.
We give this song 3 ears out of 5
