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Malacoda is a Canadian band and as I listened to their self-titled debut I vacillated between giving them the review you're about to read and forgetting the whole thing but since they went to the trouble of sending it and I dutifully listened I went with the former. Why the lead up? Malacoda play a distinctly modern style of Metal that shares as much with Alternative Rock as it does with Progressive Metal, the genre I kept trying to align this album with. The guitars are heavy and the drop/down tuning isn't egregious so I can live with that but then things go downhill. The vocals are angst-ridden with occasional harsh singing which immediately brings all things "core" to mind and a lot of the riffs are off a Foo Fighters record. I can't trash the playing (and I can't deny liking the song "Outback") but I do question what the guys in Malacoda want to be; a true Heavy Metal band or a Modern Metal band? They are certainly free to continue straddling the line but I'll probably continue to not really enjoy their music. Since this is a true Heavy Metal site the rating reflects those values as applied to Malacoda. Unless you're into Modern Metal and Hard Rock, you'll probably want to pass.