NATO - Kill The Fox To Foil The Plan
Nato deserve an award for the most idiotic band name of all times. I can’t imagine adherents of the militarist organisation finding interest in screamo and metalcore music.
Starting in the English county Cornwall in 2007, Nato obtained, thanks to a convincing performance when opening for Enter Shikari, quite soon a record deal. Their debut Kill The Fox To Foil The Plan offers extreme music without coming up with anything unprecedented. At least the album takes advantage from a powerful production by Mark Daghorn, who already created perfect sounds for Raging Speedhorn and Cradle Of Filth in the past.
Apart from two short instrumentals, Nato play ten ferocious songs that normally are between three and four minutes long. The pace is nearly all the time quite fast, giving ample space to the aggressive guitars. Despite sounding trendy, Nato always come quickly to the point, never losing time getting there. Their strongest moments can be found in the middle of the CD, which is unusual, as many young bands put their best efforts often in the beginning to capture their audience’s attention. Devil’s House Of Mirrors and My Cortina Tragedy are my two personal highlights where growls, screams and melodic vocal lines not only follow each other, but sometimes even run in parallel without diluting the sound. There is enough variety to prevent the band from getting stuck somewhere for too long.
Kill The Fox To Foil The Plan is a decent debut, but Nato need to mature and emancipate themselves from the current screamo and metalcore patterns. For now, their target audience consists most probably of teenage black clad kids.