EkoTren is an American band (Florida to be exact), and was founded back in 2000. It’s a five-piece who alledgedly toured a lot off their two EPs prior to this, their first full length album.

This is your typical metalcore act, no real surprises here I have to say. There are some good melodies from time to time, but I miss a track or two that sort of sticks to my mind, after the album is over I don’t have any clear favorites or riffs that I remember.

- and that’s probably the biggest “problem” for the band from my point of view – it’s all well done, but doesn’t really stand out from the rest of the many (mostly American) metalcore bands of today. The sound is tight and intense, what you’d expect of a metalcore band of these days. EkoTren reminds me in some places of Rage Against The Machine, but I guess that’s not unusual, as they’ve seemed to inspire a lot of todays metalcore bands …

The voice of vocalist John Sheldon is in the screams or speaks sounding like most other bands of the genre, but they have some good vocal harmonies – the melodic singing (fx. on Tranqualized or Death Blanket) is for me the vocal strongpoint of the band.

Every instrument is played well, but for me the good, solid drumming stands out from the rest.

I don’t really know what to think of the rebel attitude from these guys (the cover shows a police shield barrier where a guy with his head covered up is about to throw a lit Molotov cocktail) – is this directed to “angry young people”? Doesn’t speak to me at least, but maybe that’s because I’m such an old fart, that doesn’t bother to rebel this way…

The cover art is held in yellow, brown and black colours (at the bottom it looks a bit like fire), and is ok done (probably a computer worked photo), but how well it fits the music and catches the eye in a record store or on the ‘net I don’t know. And as I’ve pointed out, I think the “message” is a bit too juvenile for my taste.