Last Call Chernobyl

Last Call Chernobyl are a progressive metal band from Halifax, NS. Their latest offering, Set Adrift, is a four-song EP that makes liberal use of harsh vocals. Composed primarily of grunts and groans, the aggression in the vocal performance comes across as more sloppy than snarling – a characteristic that dominates the album. While Last Call Chernobyl are certainly talented, their compositional skills are still extremely raw and Set Adrift suffers from a great deal of noodling, but not a lot of solid song construction. The record sounds like they generated a bunch of cool phrases, riffs and passages, and then strung them together with little thought for the overall structure of the song or even how well one section moves into another. The transitions are jerky and the record is devoid of the long narrative threads or inventive juxtaposition of excellent progressive metal. Set Adrift is very similar to previous effort Drowning Beneath the Sound of Change, in that it's weirdly emotionless beyond some raw, yell-y anger; it's featureless aggression with no purpose or direction. There's no question the members of Last Call Chernobyl can play, and well, but after listening to Set Adrift, one can't help but remain unconvinced that they can write, either thematically or structurally.