Autonomy are one of the latest acts from the U.K. to tackle the new metal sound and the end result of their combination of fast paced rapcore meets jagged new metal riffs winds up sounding like Superheist and Senser colliding head on at high speed. Fast paced with deft lyrical play, the choruses come flush with emotional wails of an almost Deftones like tinge, before tossing the listener back into the fray of mincing guitars and aggressive vocal batterings.
With a sound similar to Taproot's Stephen Richards mixed with Ian of the Lostprophets, band front men Terry and Jay deftly trade off vocal parts, working together to build a dynamic verbal barrage of sound that is intertwined tightly enough to make it hard for the less trained ear to discern the difference between the two members. Using tongue tying raps and flammable chorus screams, the duos knowledge of each other is quite evident and as such the energy they assemble is hard to resist. Downtuned guitars also grace the disc with a mixture of Rage Against The Machine meets Korn experimentation, while the main verse riffs seem to be sharper and more focused in a style akin to Limp Bizkit and Shuvel. The bass on the otherhand is respectably tuned and tends to hit in bursts, coating the percussion, while constantly helping the guitar build up steam.
Musically everything tends to fit in its place and the song structures do possess a few surprises here and there, though they are still pretty much done by the book when it comes to a rapcore sound. Perhaps the thing that puts this band up a notch is their abundant energy, which is recklessly channeled into the songs, ensuring that the bands live shows would be marked a ferocious mosh pit. But in the end, its nothing that hasn't been done in the past and as such it will be interesting to see where these boys can go from here. With countless acts who have attempted similar sounds now languishing on the sidelines in the U.S. and the backlash against the pairing of rap and rock steadily mounting, the band may have trouble breaching North American shores, though they just may be able to establish their own autonomy in their native U.K.
(3 / 5)
