Unsu

With their fourth album, UNSU, Frenchmen Lyzanxia distinguish themselves for touching upon several separate styles of modern heavy metal — thrash, death, hardcore metal, even a little black and nu-metal — with commendable versatility and flexibility; yet without feeling the need to commit to any of them entirely. The dual-vocal attack of David and Franck Potvin pretty much guarantees variety from song to song and moment to moment, but if there's any easy comparison to be made for tracks like "Path Blade," "Answer Fields" and "Defensive Heart," it is that they share the same confluence of melodies and hooks with complex, but not overbearing arrangements, that has worked wonders in the early 2000s for Swedish post-deathsters like In Flames, Soilwork, and Scar Symmetry. But Lyzanxia wisely never stay put long enough to get boxed in so easily, recalling the Haunted's speed-thrashing purity with raging opener "Wise Counselor," echoing the precise, near-industrial riffing and techno elements of Fear Factory on "X-Modification" and "Ascension," and churning out Pantera-sized mega-grooves in "Early Phases," "Strength Core" and "Tedium." Both of the latter bands' qualities collide to perfection on the stunning "Bled Out" (which boasts the album's best and heaviest riff), and there are also a few surprising, out-of-nowhere moments like the title cut's Eastern flavored midsection, containing what sounds like a sitar! In short, UNSU features a vast range of dovetailing styles supported by never less than solid songwriting whose only possible weakness may be a failure to connect with territorial-minded metalheads, for whom sub-sub-genre pigeonholing is, unfortunately, often innate to their fandom. Let's hope that's not the case here, because UNSU deserves to be appreciated as a fine heavy metal album, plain and simple.