Sheffield five-piece While She Sleeps are back with a vengeance. ‘Brainwashed’ – their second album and follow-up to 2012’s ‘This Is The Six’ – is exactly what you would expect from them, but they’ve well and truly upped their game. Opening with a classic Sleeps intro and then exploding into single ‘New World Torture’, they show they well and truly mean business.
Steel City has been churning out fantastic metal bands for some years now, and While She Sleeps have been flying that flag since 2010 when they released their fantastic mini-album ‘The North Stands For Nothing’. Five years on and nothing has changed drastically in their sound, but they’ve taken what they had and honed it to perfection.
‘Brainwashed’ is the ideal mixture of chugging riffs, screams, melodic vocals, and above all, headbanging moments. If you don’t bang your head while you’re listening to this record, you’re doing it wrong. This album has a lot of standout moments, but the highlight is most probably ‘Four Walls’, which was released late last year. It starts off quietly, but this is the calm before the storm, because when it kicks in, it’s absolutely glorious.
While She Sleeps specialise in heavy music, but it never gets monotonous or boring because they mix it up with great choruses, melodic moments and gang vocals for everyone to shout along with. They’ve got it down, and if they keep going this way, there’s no knowing where they might end up.
There are no big surprises with this album: this is the While She Sleeps we know and love, but they’ve taken it up several notches. It’s loud, it’s heavy, and it’s bloody fantastic. Make sure you get involved, because this album might just see them hit the big time. Bravo.
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