With a mixture of the oldschool sounds of Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy and the modern emo/ metal bands Funeral For A Friend and Bullet For My Valentine and an average age of 18, Civillian sounds pretty surprising. This single, called Mask, is the first recording of Civillian and yet they have a great open sound with a great production. This is also the work of Ace, former Skunk Anansie guitarist, who produced and mixed the single.

 

Starting this single with the title track, which is a straight forward metal song with a great vibe in it, Civillian immediately fulfilled some of my expectations. ‘Empty’, which is the second song on this single, reminds me a lot of Dream Theater with their typical song structure and build up at the end of the song. At the last song of the single Civillian is completely loose. 'Don’t Die' has practically everything to bring this band to another level. Heavy riffs combined with subtle guitar work, passionate vocals with roaring growls and great drum work underneath all this.

 

This single contains three great songs of a pretty young band, that has great potential to grow. The songs ‘Empty’ and ‘Don’t Die’ even have some hit potential. Of course you can file this under emocore but I believe that’s too simple because Civillian has much more to offer than the average emo band. I hope there’s a lot more where this single came from.