Anti-Clone – The Root of Man

Looking like the strange, steampunk cousins of Evil Scarecrow, Boston’s Anti-Clone are finally in a stable position after a few years of unrest. They’ve certainly built a rousing touring pedigree in recent times – Skindred, Breed 77 and American Head Charge have all allowed the Brits a share of their stage – and they managed to raise enough via Pledge to get their debut album The Root of Man up and running as well. It’s also been produced by Matt Hyde, who has handled mixing duties on both Slipknot’s All Hope is Gone and Trivium’s The Crusade.

The Root of Man is, in its base form, a nu-metal album for 2016, a genre that has somewhat ground to a halt with Korn forever heading in a different direction, Limp Bizkit nowhere to be seen and all the other bands from that period either long gone or touring to give twenty-somethings a shot of nostalgia (see Mushroomhead, SOiL, Coal Chamber, Dope and a host more). It wouldn’t be unfair to say, therefore, that Anti-Clone need to pull something monumental out of the bag to make things relevant again. Sadly, it’s too big a task for them. That isn’t to say that the album is devoid of all quality – ‘A Sight for Sewn Eyes’ is a genuine stormer invoking early Manson and ‘Mechanical Heart’ would get bodies moving at any show with its bounce and energy, but for the most part it’s formulaic, meandering and unfortuantely pretty forgettable. The industrial guitar riffs are reminiscent of Fear Factory but wouldn’t get further than B-side material if Dino Canizares had written them and the record suffers from a very slow start that only gets going at the aforementioned ‘…Sewn Eyes’ and never fully recovers. However, Anti-Clone provide enough flashes of brilliance to build on and suggest they could create something huge on future releases. The Root of Man is not an awful record by any stretch; it’s just not as good as it could be.

Band lineup

Mr Clone (Peter Moore) – lead vocals
Conor Richardson – guitar/vocals
Liam Richardson – guitar/vocals
Mike Bradbury – bass
Drew Moore – drums/programming

Track listing

The Root of Man
Deracinated
SwitchBlade
A Sight for Sewn Eyes
B9
Twisted Neck
Mechanical Heart
Feed the Machine
ComaSpace
Astaroth
Sentinel

Links

http://www.anticlonehq.com/
www.facebook.com/AnticloneHQ
www.twitter.com/AnticloneHQ