Play 90 second soundbite of 'Lucifer' @ 'CD quality'
'Fear' is rammed with big riffs and an abundance of wailing and screaming guitar fills vying with wonderfully tight percussive punctuation and majestic bass runs. Vocally, Toxic go places where many of their contemporaries don't and often can't go. And, this is where we start to hear some of Toxic's juxtapositional interplay as the lead voice is often set tonally opposed to the massive, dark, instrumental backdrop. The voices aren't actually 'soft' but they are somehow less robust in form than many similarly ilked hard-rock outfits. Actually the 'feel' of the bulk of the vocals is somewhat reminiscent of a lot of Rainbow's work and such great names as Graham Bonnet and Ronnie James Dio - hey, and that can't be bad!! Also, Toxic slip in some really tasty vocal interplay with the odd spoken word and slightly more sinister tone straddling the lead. Good work you Toxic guys!!
I actually expected Toxic to be much more 'metalist' in nature - I was therefore quite pleased to find out that they preferred to go down the 'tangible' rock route, the slightly more retro route perhaps? Whatever, Toxic have a great sound, loads of unexpected dynamics to keep things nicely fluid, masses of hefty head-bangin' grooves to mess with yer mind and a shed-load of really strong, well structured songs for the Toxic 'boys' to work their individual and combined musical magic with. Toxic inject some 'unusual atmospherics' into their hard-ground-out monstrous rock; they cleverly act and react with and against the rock and metal norm such that they will appeal to a much wider rock audience than many of their 'brothers in rockin' arms'.
'Fear' by Toxic bucks many of the current rock trends by sticking more to hard rather than metal rock - Toxic keep their music well within the bounds of acceptability; they make a massive musical 'noise' without ever loosing the plot or transgressing into full-blown metal mayhem. Toxic are hard enough, they are loud enough, they are angry enough and they are driven enough - with loads of rockin' light and shade, Toxic mix and match their rock with considerable skill, they do what it says on the 'tin', they rock and they roll, but more than just that, Toxic absolutely blast through this fourteen track album with massive drive, gutsy passion and full-on commitment to the cause!
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