I have rarely been happier with the release of a single than I was with the release of Raizer’s A.I.. Just in case you haven’t noticed anything of the hype around this new band: Raizer is an Eastern European Electronic Rock/Drum & Bass band who released its first single less than a year ago. At the same time the band officially signed with Independent Alternative Electronic label FiXT, where musically similar artists like The Qemists and Blue Stahli are signed to as well.
The Singles
With only A.I. released I already wrote the Discover feature (in Dutch) for this band, because it showed a lot of promise. However, I had no idea how the band would evolve after this track. Right now, with the album playing through my headphones, I can finally do so. My first contact with the band was through the three singles they released: A.I., title track We Are the Future and Fall. In the end you can say that my opinion of the album is along the same lines as the singles and the order they were released in. A.I. was a beautiful first track to receive from this band. It’s a fast track with a lot of both Drum & Bass and Rock elements. It was a good start and my biggest disappointment was the fact there were no more Raizer tracks to listen to at that time. The only letdown trackwise are the lyrics, but I’ll get back to that later on.
We Are the Future draws a lot of elements from Dubstep. It makes the track delightfully stompy and I’m pretty sure this tracks might be one of the highlights during a live show. Nevertheless, I’ll probably skip this track on the CD more often than not because Dubstep has never been a genre I like. Once again the lyrics are a nuisance as well, they’re a lot worse than they were at A.I.. However, the bad taste this left is short lived. The last single Fall saves the day. It’s a track a simply fell in love with. The tempo drops, something which I would describe as unpolished Madeon instrumentals (I mean unpolished in a positive way. The rough edge it gives is something I would like to see more of) run the show and the vocals of Raizer vocalist Anthony give that similar unique vibe Pendulum frontman Rob Swire’s vocals have.
The Problem with the Lyrics
Fall has something else going for it as well. For the first time in a Raizer song the lyrics aren’t an issue for me. However, at no point on the album they will be top notch. It’s something that bothers me a little throughout the whole album, but I don’t think you should expect much better during the debut album of a band whose first language isn’t English. There will be some language errors, the pronunciation is from time to time quite… unique and the lyrics sound somewhat broad or meaningless, but this doesn’t make them sound less cool. So unless meaningful lyrics are everything to you in music, it doesn’t matter too much.
Parallels
Like I said before, my opinion about the album itself runs parallel to my opinion of the singles. It starts off strong with a nice dose of Drum & Bass in intro track The Singularity. Dawn and Abduction are loud, filled with musical violence and create a healthy dose of interest for everything that will follow. During Magic and We Are the Future my interest fades away due to some big misses (mainly in lyrics). However, the remaining six tracks make everything right again. In the end I need to give a special shout out the the chorus of closing track Far Away, which got stuck in my head ever since. I want to apologise to everyone I all of a sudden started singing these lyrics to: hopefully you now understand my abnormal behaviour.
Conclusion
Are you a fan of all three Raizer singles? Then this will be your favourite album of 2017! Have you never heard of this band, but are you a fan of Pendulum, Hadouken! or The Qemists? In that case this album is a good replacement to finally process the loss of the former two bands and it’s a good addition to your collection of the latter. Are you someone looking for deep, meaningful and correctly pronounced lyrics, then I would suggest to wait a couple of years with this band to give them a second chance.
Score: 8,5/10
Release date: 20 januari 2017
Label: FiXT
We Are the Future by Raizer can be bought here.
