ALBUM REVIEW: Solarray – The Oklahoma Kid

Though seven years into their musical venture, THE OKLAHOMA KID very much feel like a band fresh out of the water. Despite the timeline for the five piece taking a while to reach an upward trajectory, with Solarray you find a band whose hunger bleeds through their audible angst. Regardless of this being the quintets debut record or not – you get a sense that this might very well be do or die for the German metallers.

This success or failure mentality is told by the bands hop scotching of genres throughout the album. Somewhat similar to FALLING IN REVERSE‘s Fashionably Late (though nowhere near as extreme in its whacky mentality), Solarray never spends enough time settled in a pattern to show off what THE OKLAHOMA KID are capable of. In fairness it’s this unpredictability which lends a helping hand to the German’s ingenuity in some areas, coming in at a combined 13 minutes – tracks like Doppelgaenger and Trailsign show different, welcome textures to the band found anywhere else on the record. The quintets dip into big, anthemic choruses, and even post hardcore respectively are nods to where experimentation could potentially take THE OKLAHOMA KID too, with Doppelgaenger in particular demonstrating examples of the bands creative nous.

Strangely though, the areas Solarray struggles to land the most are where THE OKLAHOMA KID stick to their rule book of low tuned metalcore. The melodic choruses of the records opening one-two; Oasis and High Stakes come across as flat and uninspired, which is frustrating, as vocalist Tom Brummer‘s Drew York-esque venemous verse delivery is as potent as it is pinching. Heartdown, though a more synth lead affair, suffers a similar fate too – and it becomes apparent that the bands obsession with throwing in clean vocals for good measure often does Solarray damage.

Before long it becomes evident that THE OKLAHOMA KID have thrown their hands at an attempt to please as many people as possible without paying too much attention to where their craft is best suited though. Electro fire starter Balaclava is unexpectedly the show-stealer here, most akin to CROSSFAITH‘s dubstep antics – this is where the German’s sound at their most exuberant, but this synthetic high spot is rarely focused on elsewhere in the record.

Solarray is an album that spends too much of its time being a crowd pleaser to have a real hook of its own. THE OKLAHOMA KID seem to have all the tools at their disposal to potentially make a crack through the walls of, well, whichever sub-genre they decide to chase after next. But this is a record that fails to lay a marker in any direction for the band to follow, with a more consistent approach – the five piece could well have an ace up their sleeve, but they’re yet to find it.

Rating: 6/10

Solarray is set for release September 6th via Arising Empire. 

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