The Unravelling - Master Drone

After severe illness and a near death experience, industrial nu-metal duo The Unravelling’s frontman Steve Moore is slowly but surely returning to his former glory and thus the band can also slowly but surely begin releasing singles. They released their first single in over five years, “Revolt,” in April of this year, and it was a major coup both with the press and their fans. Now with the follow-up, “Master Drone,” The Unravelling are slowly gaining steam and returning to the former heavy yet diverse sound that made them an underground favourite five years ago.
The Unravelling won both critical and popular acclaim with their first full album in 2010. 13 Arcane Hymns won a number of accolades on its release including three nominations in the 2010 Alberta Metal Awards with a win in the Best Album category, a top position on the CSJW metal charts and extremely high praise from the likes of Metalsucks.com, Suite101 and Pitch Black Magazine. Their unique combination of industrial, different types of metal and a hint of grunge on 13 Arcane Hymns was able to reach a wide audience but still earn respect from the more dedicated metal and industrial scenes.
With April’s “Revolt,” songwriter and producer Gustavo DeBeauville changed his format from the 2010, as it was decidedly more industrial than most of the tracks on 13 Arcane Hymns with very little metal. For Moore’s part, his vocals and lyrics were definitely up to par with history. With lyrics both politically and introspectively tinged, Moore drew on the experience of his illness and found that a true revolt has to start from within oneself. Vocally, his energy was as fiery as ever.
“Master Drone,” which was released earlier this July, starts out quite a bit heavier than “Revolt,” and has no shortage of DeBeauville’s characteristic guitar work, but he winds it down to a more drawn-out goth metal feel for the verse to allow for Moore’s powerful lyrics. DeBeauville toggles back and forth between these two styles, and the interplay between his guitar and musical songwriting and Moore’s vocals is smooth and seamless despite the hard edge to the song. This is something the duo have always done particularly well.
Moore’s vocal timbre is clear and operatic in places, similar to Maynard from Tool. In other areas he takes on a raspy, screaming quality somewhat like Richard Patrick from Filter. Lyrically, there’s a lot to this song, per Moore’s modus operandi. On The Unravelling’s Bandcamp page, he says that the “Master Drone” is meant to be a character; a sort of dystopian figure who lives well through a filter of reality which Moore clearly believes is a farce. The Master Drone has mastered conventional reality, and although this character seems to have a perfect handle on life, he or she is ultimately lost because mastery of this life is an illusion. The real masters are those creating and perpetuating conventional reality as a distraction and a control mechanism. It’s a powerful message, and Moore paints a vivid picture.
Gustavo DeBeauville saved lots of material in the hopes that Steve Moore would recover from his illness and the duo could continue on the unique metal/industrial fusion and dystopian musical path they’d started. Hopefully they will soon release a full album, but in the meantime their single releases are more than enough for fans who were missing The Unravelling.  What’s even better is that all their music is available for free download on Bandcamp.




Aug 03 2015