Band: As Bold As Lions
Title: s/t EP
Label: Newline Music
Release Date: 2009
Review By: Steve
Tracklisting:
- Open Your Eyes
- The Call
- Reaching Out
- Face of Reality
- Moving Forward
- The Anthem
Looking to add some excitement to your church on Sunday? Want to add a pit and some hardcore dancers spin kicking the air? Well get As Bold As Lions to come to your church and this might just happen. As Bold As Lions is a five-piece metalcore band out of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. With a name like that there is no need to go into a lengthy explanation of how they came up with the name or track titles for that matter. It also worth mentioning that one of As Bold As Lions’ co-mangers is none other than Arthur Green of Living Sacrifice.
This EP is the debut for ABAL and is actually pretty darn good for a debut. This is not your run of the mill metalcore album. I would say that it is more of a praise and worship metalcore album. This six-song EP is filled with heavy breakdowns and tons of great riffs in addition to an uplifting message. If I could replace the worship band at my church, I would replace them with ABAL in heartbeat! By the way I like my church worship band but I could always use a little metal on Sunday morning.
The best song on the EP is “Face of Reality.” In this song ABAL does some great job of alternating between deeper slower growls and faster higher screams, which do a great job of mixing up the tempo of the song and giving the listener something new to listen to. ABAL mixes the highs and lows on several other tracks, but they do the best job on “Face of Reality.”
Lyrically, ABAL almost is like the audio books of Psalms and Proverbs on steroids! With lyrics from “The Anthem” like this, “Lord give us Your Strength, so we can live right by you / Lord give us Your Heart, So we can speak the Truth / Lord give us your Wisdom, to discern right from wrong / Lord give us your Compassion, to keep each other Strong / Keep us Strong!” it is hard not to be edified listening to ABAL.
Overall: this is a solid debut release from a solid band. I don’t know how many metal heads want praise and worship metal, but if you are looking for some metal with your praise and worship, then this is definitely an album and band that you should check out.