HARDWARES

Floridian power metallers Firstborn spent nearly nine months in the studio perfecting their new album, Evilution. A semi-conceptual effort about the origins of modern man and alien visitation of Earth; these nine songs are housed in a deluxe digipack. However the production quality is still at the demo stage and vocalist Joe Rooney’s claim to hit “Halford like highs and Benton like lows” stretches the truth beyond the point of breaking. The knuckle-dragging seven-and-a-half minute title track should most certainly be shaved down to size. That being said, even the four-minute ‘Repeater Of Slaughter’ seems too long as it rides the same simple riff almost non-stop. Lyrically, ‘You’re Living A Lie’ is oh so weak – “Why can’t you see you’re beginning to piss me off?” ‘F.O.D’ is equally pathetic – “Music is my life, I live to play. To you a big joke, marriage decay.” How this fits in with the supposed historical, sci-fi concept is anyone’s guess? To think that a woman could get pregnant, conceive a child and give birth in the time it took Firstborn to deliver this lacklustre album puts everything in perspective.