Ektomorf – The Acoustic (2012)

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REALLY GOOD !

Whenever a heavy band does an acoustic album one of two things results. Either they just record acoustic arrangements of their existing songs, and either stick rigidly to the original structure or create something new and more delicate from them, or they completely mellow out and record wholly uncharacteristic tracks with softer vocals etc. Strangely, Hungarian Soulfly-clones Ektomorf have done neither of these things entirely. What they have done is rearrange five older songs, write five new ones, and top them off with covers of Johnny Cash‘s Folsom Prison Bluesand Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s Simple Man. Re-recording I Know Themsets the tone with a full on bass and drums assault that really does sound like a normal, heavy Ektomorf song with the guitars unplugged, even down to Zoltán Farkas’ growled vocals. I’m In Hate is a similar story (even if the chorus does sound like “I’m in heat”), while Redemption takes on an Alice In Chains feel mixed with Rammstein‘s Los. Stigmatized gets a softer treatment to begin with, but goes heavy in the second half, and Who Can I Trust is given a complete Spanish guitar overhaul. With the covers, Zoltán’s voice doesn’t quite suite either of them, and the decision to give the first minute of Folsom Prison Blues, which mostly sounds like Volbeat are playing it, the effect of an analogue radio with poor reception is strange, but overall at leastSimple Man is a great rendition. The real highlight appears amongst the new songs though. Be Free is actually a full-on heavy song much like the version of I Know Them, while ballads Again,Fate and Through Your Eyes are all a bit too alt-radio-rock, but To Smoulder is the kind of track the whole album should really have sounded like. Again much like an AIC acoustic song it’s dark and brooding without trying to be heavy and without being too “safe”. More like that, with some of the rearrangements and some slightly wiser choices of cover songs would have made this a superb record. Instead it’s only a slight-above-average one

01. I Know Them (4:39)
02. I'm In Hate (3:46)
03. Be Free (3:26)
04. Redemption (3:38)
05. Simple Man (5:01)
06. To Smoulder (3:17)
07. Folsom Prison Blues (3:10)
08. Again (4:07)
09. Through Your Eyes (3:23)
10. Fate (2:07)
11. Stigmatized (5:00)
12. Who Can I Trust (5:42)

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