‘Alpha’ is the sixth studio album from Sevendust, it was recorded in late 2006 and finally saw its official UK release in December 2007 complete with two previously unavailable bonus tracks. The album features a total of 14 tracks, it clocks in at just over 51 minutes in length and as hard as the band tries here the music just always sounds exactly the same. The bands music takes influence from the genre of hip-hop and this whole album sounds to be stuck in some sort of time warp; ‘Alpha’ could easily have been released at the height of nu-metal popularity in the mid-90s, it wasn’t though and as an album of 2007 it all just sounds incredibly dated.
This ‘Alpha’ album easily could have been released by Slipknot, the vocal performance here bears more than just a slight resemblance to that of Slipknot’s Corey Taylor; any Slipknot fan will however inform you that this is an incredibly poor imitation album from Sevendust. The band has been around now since 1992, spent a year on the Roadrunner Records label between the years of 2005 and 2006 and does absolutely nothing here to distinguish itself from any of the other rubbish that riddles the Roadrunner record label. This is an incredibly generic nu-metal album from Sevendust, the band does nothing here to separate itself from the crowd and instead the music created here is incredibly unoriginal and never does the sound surprise.
From first track ‘Deathstar’ through to closer ‘Abuse Me’ the bands music fails to make any sort of impression here, the album drones on and always the album lacks spark. I was once a huge fan of the whole nu-metal movement, that was many years ago now however and even back then I’m sure I’d have turned my nose up at this one. Even by nu-metal standards this album is not very good; the guitar riffs are incredibly formulaic, it’s as if the band read some sort of nu-metal manual here and set out to include every cliché possible on this album. As I’ve said before; the vocals copy Slipknot, and the instrumental performance also offers nothing that has not been done to death before. The band progresses its way through many a power riff here, the music attempts to offer alternative but all it ever provides is musical monotony.
If the band had released this album in the mid-90s then I’m sure that it would have wrongly shifted many a copy; it’s not very good at all though and is in fact a completely unoriginal album of nu-metal nonsense. From a band that has now released seven studio albums I was really expecting a lot more, the lack of imagination shown here really is incredibly disappointing and I’m sure that this band could have come up with a lot more had they just tried a little bit harder. Nu-metal is no longer cool, this sort of sound has for a long while now not been popular, and even if it was then a lot more would be expected of an album than this. ‘Alpha’ is a definite album to avoid, as much as this band wants to be Slipknot it’s not and this truly is a droning bore of an album from Sevendust.
Label: Asylum Records
Release Date: December 17th 2007
Rating:
UK based film graduate with a huge passion for music, sports and video games.
