DisAgreement Online

Has it really been eight years since the debut EP by Luxembourgish alternative rock/metal band Mean To You? They never seemed to really lift off. Despite being a quality band, their sound was maybe a little too mature and/or American sounding for the local market. So they band fell apart, with the musicians being busy in other projects, until the summer of 2021 when bass player Mulles revived Mean To You by releasing an hour long electro / techno album titled Electronicum I. So that’s what the lockdown does to you! And yet he was also working on new metal material with musicians from all over the world via the internet. He got together a vocal coach from France, a session drummer from England and a guitarist from a Ukrainian groove metal band. Quite the international line-up got there together!

The first EP Strong came out in November 2021 and contains six tracks that have more in common with the debut album than with the electro output. In fact Mean To You have become quite heavy. What the band offers is a pleasant mix of alternative metal and groove metal, with the singer showing off his broad range of vocal styles, and the band offering quite an able backdrop for it all. There are hard-hitting groove metal attacks, followed by melodic choruses with multi-layered vocals, and it’s the latter that work most in Mean To You’s favour.

What doesn’t work as well is the mix. In my car stereo for instance, it all sounds like the music has been put together first, and then the vocalist added his lines, making them in my opinion way too loud, soaring over the music instead of being a part of the whole. On my cheaper computer external speakers, the mix strangely sounds a little better. Mean To You’s debut was considered a demo, and yet came with a rather decent sound, probably due to the fact that it was a bunch of musicians playing IRL. The new Mean To You works over the internet, and it shows. Strong has some really great tunes, but they deserve a better mix. Let’s hope that the guys will take that to heart in order to deliver the next time a worthy successor full of punching alt metal hymns.