It’s telling that the first line on Amoral’s latest record, Show Your Colors, is seemingly a self-confession. “There’s going to be some changes,” new Amoral singer Ari Koivunen puts forth - in his golden, clean vocals no less - on opener ‘Release’ and he’s not kidding: gone are the days when Helsinki’s Amoral was a technical death band, and here is the era of Amorphis stylings and loud hard rock. Though Amoral’s more aggressive side does make occasional appearances (the group hasn’t forgotten its way around a blastbeat), Show Your Colors is primarily a slick, power-inflected hard rock album for a European market that not only still embraces the hard rock sub-genre, but continues to revere it alongside its heavier counterparts; unlike the more regimented, categorizing North Americans, Euros seem to have no qualms seeing a band such as Amoral on the same stages as substantially more underground fare. In any case, Amoral has written and executed a highly listenable effort, one that shows its ambition at every corner – it’s obvious that Amoral’s goal was the top tier and it’s that work ethic that has the potential to win the band a larger segment of supporters in the face of an admittedly vast stylistic shift. The idiosyncrasy of the month happens here, too: check out ‘Vivid’ for uncannily old school Crue moments, right down to the L.A.-ish lyrics and Too Fast For Love-worshipping guitar phrasing and cowbell.
