EP REVIEW: Immaculate – View From The Soyuz

VIEW FROM THE SOYUZ really should’ve been born a couple of decades earlier. Were that the case there is no doubt that the Japanese four-piece would’ve made many great friends with all those metalcore bands who suddenly seemed to be digging out their copies of Slaughter Of The Soul and balancing out their breakdowns with riffs lifted straight from the canals of Gothenburg. Alas, such matters are out of everyone’s control – except maybe their parents – so all we can do is enjoy the arrival of their sophomore EP Immaculate this Friday, even if it does feel like a record from another time.

Broadly speaking, Immaculate picks up exactly where the band’s 2021 debut In Misty Path left off. It’s a bit longer, and this time around they’re signed to the excellent DAZE who should help them get their scorching sound into a few more ears, but other than that the focus, and more importantly the quality, remains largely unchanged. Of course, the old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ applies to more than just the band’s approach from one record to the next; this is a sonic formula that has been around for some time, and there are no significant attempts to mess with it here.

What a wonderful formula it is though. VIEW FROM THE SOYUZ’s sound certainly throws back more towards the most savage end of the melodeathy metalcore spectrum – more ARKANGEL than KILLSWITCH ENGAGE perhaps – especially as there are none of those huge clean vocal choruses that allowed some of the best-known proponents of this style to take it to its most enviable commercial heights in the mid-00s. This is a fierce, urgent record, with vocalist Masa’s furious rasp rarely even tipping halfway towards anything vaguely melodic as the rest of the band make easy work of all the genre’s essentials.

That does mean that most of the tracks follow a similar pattern, if not completely in structure at least in the elements the listener ultimately ends up taking away from them. Generally there’ll be a thrashy verse or two, some great melodeath riffing from guitarist Nari, and the inevitable chugging breakdown – all executed to the standard of a band who know exactly what they are here to do. Whether one song stands out more than any other is probably a matter of how closely you are paying attention to each individual track, but the pick of the bunch for most is likely to be Sky Burial, mainly because it has a proper hook of sorts where tremolo-picked guitars and driven double kicks even start to recall the epic, chest-pounding power of a band like AMON AMARTH for example.

Elsewhere, the vinyl-only track Stick In The Mud is arguably the record’s fiercest, while closer Frozen Black certainly soars the highest thanks to its MAIDEN-esque leads and solos. These two songs are placed right next to each other in the tracklist as though to show off at least some semblance of range within the band’s sound, but to be honest they don’t really need to. VIEW FROM THE SOYUZ are already great at what they do, and while they could and no doubt will add a few more strings to their bow as they develop, here they provide a throwback thrill that’s worth revisiting for more than reasons of nostalgia alone.

Rating: 7/10

Immaculate is set for release on February 10th via DAZE.

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