Bound By Fate are a groove metal band from Cleveland, Ohio. I wonder how many stops reading this text after that first sentence... Anyway, I was introduced to this style in early 1990s, when the likes of Prong, Pantera, Machine Head and Crowbar were doing good. Well, groove metal style was picked up by so many bands back in the day, that it soon became the style that got so much flak. And quite a lot of it for good reasons, too. Not destroyed by smear campaign, it is still popular, and I do not mind if the music's good.

BBF can be called as a crossover band; they mix sludge and heavy metal with hardcore punk influences. I could pin them down as a composite between Crowbar, Pantera and Helmet, all during their 1990s. BBF's music is totally rhythm and riff based; vocals are just hoarse, at times semi-melodic... well, vocalization! Something like a mixture of more non-melodic, pretty torque-filled Phil Anselmo and Robb Flynn. The songs... They are very, very simplistically composed, as they usually include two different parts, and the most diverse one includes three parts. It gets repetitive faster than a AC/DC album... Surely there are some slight alterations there, like the drummer gets wild and plays that other part of a song with double bass drums for a change.

The biggest forte of the band is their somewhat characteristic guitar and bass playing. And these traits happen in every song. They really need to go for more varying compositions, because this gets stale fucking fast. I especially like the "bubbling" bass playing, which is not about funk, but is very lively. Sound-wise this is hard-hitting, as everything is mixed on about similar volume level. It makes the music sound thick, for sure, and still it is quite easy to sort every instrument and vocals out. It's pretty sludgy, actually.

There are some cool riffs, but the band's style is so bloody narrow, that it soon eats its own tail. About after four songs... The closer offers a bass solo at the beginning, but otherwise it all is so homologous, that it almost makes me angry! Why the heck it's all about this kind of over-simplistic compositions?!?! Go, try some different approach, guys, because this is now all thoroughly heard. At their best, the band roll on really well, but the songs do not go anywhere.

Rating: 5 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
05/10/2016 19:36