TAO MENIZOO are – at least for me – one of the big surprises this year. After various demo and self-financed releases this French quartet now presents their self-titled debut.
Cover artwork and info sheet left a quite fishy impression upon me, since they talk about polymorph metal, mixing up many styles and influences …
To make it clear: They were been right! TAO MENIZOO blend Metalcore with Death, Thrash and Industrial-like samples, jazzing up the brew with diverse elements and influences. Singing gets shared between both of the axe men, while one of them is gowling and shouting and the other one is singing clean (reminds me sometimes of Waltari’s Kärtsy Hatakka and Burton C. Bell of Fear Factory fame). Clean voice gets sometime abused for twisted spacy screams.
As prime example for the entire album one can take the opener called Paranoid Crisis, which alone displays so many styles other bands hardly use on three albums. Another highlights are Thorns – which starts with a tweeting birds intro, added by a doomy background, leading into South Of Heaven adapted riffs, just to turn out totally different and unexpected afterwards; and Innerängst with its neck-breaking killer riffs.
I would like to refer to bands such as Fear Factory and Rob Zombie stylistically wise. I also can imagine that bands like Faith No More/ Mike Patton and NIN have left their marks upon TAO MENIZOO’s basic ideas as well.
In spite of this wild mixture compositions sound much homogeneous and well elaborated, since a red thread gets kept through the entire album. Every single song has its big moments and surprises, so that you cannot really point out highlights. They are all great and sound different each time you are listen to them. TAO MENIZOO unite many styles, elements and influences but never chumming up or copying , they just hint at them. Making it impossible to peg them in any labelled drawer. They are just TAO MENIZOO. Unique. Killer!