Forcefeed are a Dutch five piece who formed in 2002. Debut album ‘When Grey Becomes’ was issued through Avalanche in 2004 and the band picked up airplay via the Dutch MTV. Second album ‘Stainless’ was issued in 2006 and is now re-issued to coincide with the band expanding their horizons in terms of touring and promotion and they will shortly be playing in the UK, Germany and Spain in addition to working towards the recording and release of a third album.

This is a pretty standard Metalcore release and takes its lead from the likes of Trivium and Soulfly with lots of chugging guitars, melodic choruses and angry lyrics. Opening with the stomping aggression of ‘In Spite Of You’ the vocals of Lennard Barendse are not too dissimilar from Matt Heafy, capable of ‘clean’ and melodic alongside the traditional scream and growl. Meantime, the rest of the band blast away in the background and look suitably menacing in the photo’s.

But whilst this is a band who are competent enough there is an air of predictability about the whole album, from the track that opens with the chugging bass riff (‘No One’) through the inevitable nu-metal ballad (‘Regret’) and the obligatory amount of filler towards the end of the album (‘Darkness Is Endless’ and the dreadfully repetitive ‘Inside’ being the chief culprits here). Lyrically the band aren’t exactly pushing the boundaries either and the fact they are difficult to read from the typesetting used in the booklet is probably no bad thing. The album closes with one of the highlights, ‘To Not Care’, which mages to demonstrates a little more invention than the majority of what has gone before although again, lyrically it is no better than average.

There are a multitude of these type of bands around and limited space for the majority of them to flourish and prosper. There is also a weight of expectation that they will come out of the blocks and make a ‘killer’ record early on in their careers. It would seem that patience and time to allow artists to mature at a steady pace is now a thing of the past. Ultimately this is what will count against bands like Forcefeed as they strive to create any sort of an impression.

Not an album that will set the world alight, but listenable enough within its own limitations.