EP REIVEW: Faction Prologue – Chasing Dragons
Metal music would be a very desolate and dull place if IRON MAIDEN hadn’t started using twin guitar melodies all those years back. Instead of using belligerent power chords, the noodling and interesting licks were combined and utilised by two guitars to create wonderful motifs that often carried the songs. Now, take those wonderful twin melodies and add some beefy guitar tones, massive bass lines and some swooning female vocals and you’ll be pretty close to CHASING DRAGONS blueprint for musical fusion.
With opening track Devil In Her Eyes, the Yorkshire quartet quickly assert themselves, leading with duel lead guitars that wouldn’t be amiss on an AVENGED SEVENFOLD album. But unlike AVENGED SEVENFOLD, CHASING DRAGONS are able to throw enough weight behind their music to clearly define themselves as something new, especially within the massive chorus of this track, with chunky power chords laying a strong base for the massive vocal delivery to take off and carry this song with it.
It does feel somewhat strange when the opening riff of second track The Mutiny sounds uncomfortably close to something a pop-punk act would come up, certainly a far cry to what the band were attempting in the previous opener. It’s on this song that CHASING DRAGONS become bogged down by too many different elements, with a breakdown mid song feeling completely out of synch with the direction of the rest of the song.
Culminating with the third and final track, Whitehorse, it becomes all the clearer that the main goal of these three tracks is to showcase as much of CHASING DRAGONS as possible. The chugging guitars speed the verses along at a marching pace whilst some interesting guitar licks fade in and out before the chorus is fully unleashed. The track never really goes anywhere though, instead circling its own musical ideas for its entire run time.
Whilst still requiring a lot of work, the core sound of CHASING DRAGONS has merit. The utilisation of duel leads as well as soaring choruses is always a winning combination but with the addition of some legitimately heavy passages, CHASING DRAGONS have something that when fully polished and perfected could be a force to be reckoned with.
Rating: 6/10
Faction Prologue is set for release on March 29th