Tangent Diverge From Classic Metal Complacency On Their Debut EP (Early EP Stream)

The old sounds of the obscure 1980s underground are still far from mainstream, but modern mainstay heavy metal label Dying Victims Productions have spent the last few years championing bands that revive that ancient sonic magick. Their newest pickup is Melbourne maniacs Tangent, whose self-titled debut EP, which we’re premiering today, aims to bring back the same charm of yesteryear’s obtuse relics, but laces nostalgia with a heavy heaping of modern fire.

Big riffs and big choruses are the play of the day and they deliver with a gusto; at no point do the songs get particularly complex, but that just serves to highlight the lead guitar when it pops up and lets the focus be the hooky riffs and rough, earnest vocals. An immediate comparison is the raw passion that simple-but-strong bands like Heavy Load brought to the Swedish scene in the 1980s or that Saxon still takes to the studio and to the stage all these years later. The songs range from classy, harmony-heavy outbursts of feeling to more traditionally pounding romps through heavy mania. They’re always linked via a certain mood to that era’s guitar riffing and are rooted in the same era of composition despite the separate forays into moodiness and aggression, song to song.

Tangent have the experience to make up for treading what are now well-beaten paths, and their members’ experience with bands like Demons Gate, Convent Guilt, and Outcast provide a foundation strong enough to start the band’s journey towards world domination. Though this EP is only four songs long, it’s a promising start for an experienced band and should provide plenty of meat to dig into while we wait to see where they go from here. It’ll be especially interesting to watch where they take their emotional side—not many bands in this general vein take the risk of delving outside of more traditionally energetic and catchy song structures, and Tangent clearly have no intentions of staying with the pack.

Read the band’s quote on the new EP below and blast our exclusive stream of the album:

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Tangent play hard music for hard times, regaling with tales of life on the edge. The music we play is the music we feel, the lives we live, the streets we walk. Roll the dice, kick down the walls and turn your music up loud!

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releases January 28th via Dying Victim Productions.