SONIC FRONT: Depart CD 2002 rare self produced. Crossover heavy rock: Filter, Stabbing Westward or Vast. Check VIDEO

Label: Not On Label (Sonic Front Self-released) ‎– none
Format: CD, Album
Country: Germany
Released: 2002
Style: Alternative Rock
Tracklist
1 This Is Where I Start To Breathe
2 Comatose
3 Dump And Chase
4 Walk Away
5 Trying
6 Red Cookie
7 Unlikely
8 Every Passing Light A Reminder
9 Speeding Time
10 Disturban
11 Depart

The Hanoverian Melancholic-Prog-Pop-Metal (more on this below) – Band Sonic Front had taken first place in December 2001 with the band Contest Sixpack, which is renowned in the state capital of Lower Saxony, and won the production for a complete album. Almost a day later, just before Christmas 2002, the CD is ready. “Depart” is the name of the good piece that has so far turned several times in the player – and later also in the reviewer’s CD-R drive, because “Depart” also has an extensive CD extra section with remixes, a video on Song “Walk away” and a photo gallery of the making of the video.

A lot of what the band has to offer here – all packaged in a booklet with very tasteful artwork, for which guitarist and graphic ace Christoph Renne is once again responsible. In general, the overall visual appearance of Sonic Front – from the band photos to the CD cover to the website is particularly worth mentioning, because more than official!

Recorded and mixed in the institute for harmonic research under the direction of Willi Dammeier, so in this context too, Sonic Front focused on quality. The result is a coherent overall product, artistically very ambitious and of great aesthetic value. Here Sonic Front has given thought and not “just” recorded 11 songs, which may still show the “wide range due to the different influences of the musicians”, often performed by other (newcomer) bands, but one also recorded musically very homogeneous album.

If you listen to the songs or the album on the side or just hint at the titles, you will certainly have difficulties with the music of Sonic Front, because there is initially little that gets stuck, memorized or particularly outstanding – and the band is not stylistically to get straight to the point, which on the other hand also speaks for a distinct individuality of the group. The tension on Sonic Front lies between instrumental fractions and vocals, which makes it difficult for the listener to lean the music on familiar genre knitting patterns in the areas of dark / melancholic pop, alternative rock, neo-prog rock or prog metal. Melancholic-Prog-Pop-Metal – the bottom line is that it does pretty well.

Bass, guitar, drums and keyboard often create a sound and rhythm carpet that is very reminiscent of bands like Dream Theater or Arena, but singer Kai Hornung does not offer the often colorful melody arches in higher pitches as you can it is familiar from a James La Brie or Rob Sowden, but a melancholic, variable in melody, expression and timbre that fits into the band sound, instead of clearly settling and asserting with catchy and catchy hooks, but in no less expansive and performed powerfully.

You won’t find any catchy tunes or positive tunes on Sonic Front, this doesn’t just apply to vocals – guitar and bass sequences also create little warmth. So this album is not for sunny minds – quite the opposite. You have to be prepared to engage intensively with the music, and if you want to live out and “enjoy” your suffering, depression or longings to the fullest, the album can be a real treat at certain moments, because the songs live on their atmospheric density and the consistently moody to dark mood. If this were the soundtrack to a continuation of the film adaptation of “1984”, Sonic Front would have hit the bull’s eye with this record.

End time mood in the brutal and ugly corners of a city on a wet and cold night in winter. At temperatures around freezing and light drizzle. Subway tunnels, the orphaned parking deck, a marshalling yard illuminated by headlights – and loudspeakers hang everywhere, from which every minute a final command threatens to sound. You could literally get scared. What remains is the desire to break out, to leave and do it as quickly as possible. Nothing like leaving here, because the abyss never seemed so close.

Welcome to the edge!