ALBUM REVIEW: Distorted Truth – Lokurah
No-one could accuse LOKURAH of being prolific. Next year will mark the completion of the Parisian quartet’s second full decade as a band, and yet Distorted Truth is only their third full-length album, and first in ten years. Whispers of this record can be found on the band’s socials as far back as 2016, however scrolling up paints a picture of multiple line-up changes and of course the small matter of the COVID-19 pandemic as just some of the obstacles they’ve had to surmount to bring us this album today.
The fact that these guys have been around since the early 00s explains a lot about the sounds we hear on Distorted Truth. This is an album that harks back to those days when the walls between metal and hardcore had really started to fall, with bands like HATEBREED, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE and LAMB OF GOD forging ahead seemingly on a mission to find the chuggiest riff to ever chug. As such, it’s no great surprise that the riffs here are the main draw, with LOKURAH essentially whipping up a mixture of thrash, groove, melodeath and metalcore that should turn listeners into one of those little bobblehead toys for all of Distorted Truth’s 12 tracks and 40 minutes.
It helps as well that new vocalist Alexandra Gelliot has a proper furious bark that elevates the general aggro of proceedings significantly. His harsher vocals are definitely stronger than some of the cleans found on the record, although it isn’t entirely clear if these are also his work or someone else’s. They aren’t completely out of tune or anything, it’s just that when we’ve heard records like this fronted by people like Matt Heafy or Howard Jones, you’re going to struggle to hold up unless you can deliver a similar level of anthemia – which of course is quite a tall order.
The other real gripe here lies in Distorted Truth’s lyrical content. Perhaps not worth fixating on too much, it is hard not to cringe a little at something like Copyrighted 666’s proclamations of “I’m copyrighted 666 / An evil bastard, a son of a bitch / I’m copyrighted 666 / You’re worst nightmare, a dark nihilist”, or In These Grey Times’ well-meaning but ultimately quite cheesy call to self-confidence. Of course, LOKURAH would hardly be the first metal band to struggle in this department, and fortunately the riffs, guitar solos and general fury mean you don’t really notice this issue unless you dig into the lyric booklet which we can at least thank the band for providing when many others don’t.
At the end of the day then, Distorted Truth is a solid enough metallic rager. It isn’t much more, but it doesn’t really need to be. It makes sensible choices, like juxtaposing the high-octane thrashing of the aforementioned Copyrighted 666 against the nastier groove of Faith Versus Reason which follows; it sounds big and powerful, as you would expect from Fredrik Nordström considering he produced pretty much every one of the iconic Gothenburg melodeath records of the 90s – and a load of classics since; and it ends in decent enough time rather than dragging things out to the hour that too many bands seem to think is necessary nowadays. It’s unlikely to blow your mind, but Distorted Truth does what it does well enough that you won’t regret giving it a listen or two.
Rating: 6/10
Distorted Truth is set for release on November 4th via Crimson Productions.
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