Feed The Rhino’s fourth album cranks everything up. The riffs may be sharper but the production’s slicker and the melodies are bigger. And therein lies the rub; while tracks like Timewave Zero and Lost In Proximity show that the band haven’t entirely shied away from the enormous grooves and tech-inspired brutality we’ve come to expect from them, the half-time choruses on songs like Heedless and Fences are begging for radio play and arena singalongs. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does situate the band in the awkward middle ground between the worlds of hardcore and mainstream rock bands like (whisper it) Lower Than Atlantis. There’s always been a melodic bent to FTR’s work, but here it’s on display like never before. It works, but it won’t be for everyone.
