There are many ways to approach your songwriting. Very often it depends on what kind of music you want to come up with. Some artists start with the lyrics, others with a melody they hear in their heads. With musicians that are working within realms of rock in one form or the other, the process might just start with a good riff. With any form of metal, it essentially has to be a captivating guitar riff.
That seems to be exactly the case with Sacramento, California guitarist Brennen Von Slack. As he puts it, for his current project Waves Of Distortion with vocalist Josiah Fox and the rhythm section of Glen Evans (bass) and Jonas Wahlstrom (drums) he wanted to start out with a “mutation of melodic distortion with droning clean tone searching for melodies.”
What we get is Race Against Time, a modern metal album that crosses the bridge with melodic hard rock throughout.
“This album is about being broken down by influences such as addiction, infidelity, or societal. Or, feeling broken by our own mortality, insecurity, weaknesses, or self-destructive behaviors. The key to overcoming is the realization that we all feel broken in some way and the pain reminds us that we are more than our foibles.”
Quite a lofty goal, but Von Slack and his cohorts have all the elements that make good metal/hard rock crossover down pat. The effect is quite simple. They bring about metal music that even the listeners who are not so keen on metal can listen to with ease. On tracks like ‘R.A.T.’ or ‘Lotus’ they are able to bring about all the elements modern metal/hard rock fans go for, from quite good riffs to combining vocals that cover both genres with ease.
It turns out that Race Against Time presents Waves Of Distortion as a metal/hard rock project to be reckoned with.
