Undertow is another one of those bands that tries to join the group of bands that don't want to adhere to any of the regular pigeon holes. Which, I guess, is a pigeon hole all of its own. In today's world there are bands who play within the rigorous parameters of a genre and bands who don't. Undertow is described as a band that has "their own sound with ingredients of thrash, doom, hardcore and new (i.e. nu?) metal". Basically, the vocals tend to be rather doomy (Serenity springs to mind) with guitars that could well be from a more traditional nu metal band. I fail to see the hardcore, but as far as I am concerned that is OK.

The bottom line is that Undertow play pretty cool metal. The music is well-written, the lyrics are sufficiently reflexive, but there is not that much that is conspicuous about the band. There's even the half-obligatory half-ballad, "Lowdown", which starts off soft but then gets balls.

RK

Written June 2002

Go to the Official Undertow site

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