My god, am I busy these days. Studying, exercise and Metalrage of course, it takes a lot of energy, that’s for sure. So when I got Chain Collectors’ CD, with only four tracks I was ready for a nice explosion of noise. Description: Melodic Metal.

I find it hard to review these kind of short CD’s. Most of the times the production is bad, and to be honest: I don’t think that four tracks should be compared to full-length records. In this context, Chain Collector does pretty well.
The first song, ‘Wicked Mask’ starts with a heavy guitar riff that reminds me off Stone Sours’ ‘Get Inside’. Fast guitar, variation in the use of the double bass and a little echo in the vocals. As the song continues, it begins to bother. Patterns are being repeated way too often and the vocals aren’t that good.
The rest of the songs present a nice way of variation. There are parts where the music slows down, speeds up and explodes. By using clean guitars and distortion, very nice drums, I can only conclude that the music is ok. Not really my kind of thing, but what the hack. The production is surprisingly well. I don’t think I can notice some bad sounds, so my thumbs up for that one.
I’m not that positive about the vocals and the effects. The singer doesn’t seem to have a lot of capacity, yet he’s trying to do a lot of different things, squeezing, screaming and yelling, it all passes by. To me, it would be better to control only a few of these. The effects are just boring, annoying and unnecessary. Because of the heavy music (I mentioned the guitar and drums), that ‘sets’ the band, the effects are an attempt to show a kind of experimentation. And that’s not necessary. This kind of music seems to be better off without them, clean.
So, my conclusion is that Chain Collector is a band with good musicians, who have a good vision of how to make good music. Despite that, this CD is a little bit frustrating, according to the overall sound of the band, which got signed to Sound Riot Records. We’ll see how it continues…

Tracklist:
1. Wicked Mask
2. Winter Princess
3. Crucifixion
4. Fallen Angel

Line up:
Gøran Bomann - Guitar
Kjetil Nordhus - Vocal
Anders Kobro - Drums
Kjell Jacobsen - Guitar