HeKz – Tabula Rasa

English metallers HeKz released their debut album ‘Tabula Rasa’ on 6 April 2012, offering us up 10 tracks in the process.  This is indeed an interesting album and another example of a band allowing its old school metal influences to flow nice and clearly through their music.  Several tracks on this album remind me of some old favourites, such as The Cult.

The bass and guitars work well together throughout the album and a good example of this is ‘Vendetta’ where they keep a melodic chugging rhythm in the verse, with the guitar repeatedly creeping out to the fore.  That is until later when it takes centre stage in an impressive solo.  What is also impressive is Matt Young’s vocals, which hark back to an older style of metal in an indulgent manner.   Listen also to ‘Seize The Day’ as this is another good example of vocals that will have you looking back in your memory to other bands (don’t miss the end though….I love a good scream!).

Listening to the overall effect you could easily be fooled into thinking that you were listening to a group of much older, more seasoned musicians – especially with the vocals. However, this is just not the case with the youngest being 21.  This in itself makes the album more interesting as it just does have a much older feel to it and it would be very interesting indeed to see how this plays out on stage.

There are several songs on this album I could recommend but I think it requires a listen straight through.  However, that’s not to say that this will necessarily be the easiest first listen as it did take me a while to really get into it.  Partly because each song, though fitting well into the album, definitely has its own personality, and on first listen it can be easier to have a more straight forward, or obvious progression.  Having said that, once I did settle into the album, I did enjoy it very much.  It has been well constructed and finished, and there has clearly been a great deal of thought put into not only the overall appearance of the album and the style, but also into the individual songs themselves.

Which leads me nicely into the another thing that struck me about the album, and that is that there were several times throughout when it felt that if I closed my eyes, I could be in a huge theatre listening to a new production.  Not completely unlike The Phantom of the Opera with its drama and very different scenes.  For as I mentioned, each song has its own personality (or ‘scene’) and each brings drama to the album, where normally you may have 3 or 4 really dramatic tracks.  The fact that two songs last for up to ten minutes just goes to prove my point further.  Examples of this drama can be found in ‘City of Lost Children’, ‘Poison Pen’ and ‘As Rome Burns’

Overall I would definitely recommend listening to this album; this is an impressive debut album from a young band and I would be very interested to see how they progress if this is what they can deliver at the start.  Also, though it took me a while to get into the flow of the album, now I’m there, I really enjoy having the various songs feeling like dramatic scenes as, for me, it bring my imagination to the fore and really takes over as opposed to just passively listening.

Track List:

1. Poison Pen
2. Bring The Fire
3. Darkness Visible
4. As Rome Burns
5. City Of Lost Children
6. Vendetta
7. Hashashiyyin
8. Seize The Day
9. A Pound Of Flesh
10. Don’t Turn Back