Gloomball - The Distance

Published April 29 2013

*=Staff's pick	Overcome* Burning Gasoline The Distance Blown Away And Gone* More And More No Easy Way Out Bitter Place Long Time Gone We Do Belong* Your Sorrow Inside Me Hands In Blood Living With My Tender Pain

Genre	Alternative Metal	Alen Ljubic	Vocals
Tracks	12	Björn Daigger	Guitar
Running time	51 Min.	Jossi Lenk	Guitar
Label	Steamhammer/SPV	Basti Moser	Bass
Release	29 April 2013	Danny Joe	Drums
Country	Germany	-	Keyboard
Producer	-
Similar artists	---

This is the debut album from German quintet Gloomball and I don't know shit about this unit, I tell you that. Initially I thought that this record was absolutely nothing for me, but I gave it another shot and soon found out that this is rather captivating metal with many heavy and distorted riffs much to my liking.

It contains certain parts of everything from punkish heavier rock to real heavy metal, thus this release lands in the not exactly flattering alternative metal marsh. The songs are sometimes pretty diverse within themselves, but, a little contradictory to what I just wrote, as a whole yet many songs sound somewhat the same. The album's got a good drive and sounds fresh, but this release definitely don't break any new ground whatsoever and there's probably thousands of bands in the last decade akin to Gloomball. I just haven't heard all of them.

I favor the heavy opener Overcome, the more catchy track Blown Away And Gone and the outstanding and more emotional, yet powerful, We Do Belong. The cover and strongly re-arranged version of the old Rocky IV soundtrack, No Easy Way Out and the last song, the ballad Living With My Tender Pain eventually make this album a bit varied. I also print a huge question mark to the choice of the album's first single, the title track The Distance, as there are so many better songs on this release. Not bad, just hardly the right decision.

Many listeners will call this radio metal guaranteed, and I'm not the one to disagree. Its production sounds very American and so does the vocal melodies. Does that equal bad? No, good music will always come out as good music, no matter which label you put on it. I won't go over the top and praise this release as something extraordinary or immense, but I like it and it's a positive debut from the German metallers.