{"id":94504,"date":"2022-07-10T00:00:40","date_gmt":"2022-07-09T23:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=94504"},"modified":"2022-07-26T13:21:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T12:21:41","slug":"album-review-exul-path-to-the-unknown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-exul-path-to-the-unknown\/","title":{"rendered":"EXUL &#8211; Path To The Unknown (2022) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"title2\"><strong>EXUL<br \/>Path To The Unknown<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-content\/themes\/metalforces\/images\/spacer.gif\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" height=\"3\" \/><br \/>\n<span class=\"title3\"><span style=\"color: #c80000;\">Self-released (2022)<\/span><br \/><strong>Rating: 6\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"image floatedright\">\n<table width=\"100%\" align=\"center\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" border=\"0\">\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-content\/themes\/metalforces\/images\/spacer.gif\" width=\"10\" border=\"0\"><\/td>\n<td>\n<div align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/exul_pathtotheunknown.jpg\" height=\"200\" width=\"200\" border=\"0\"><\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\" align=\"center\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" border=\"0\">\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>\n<div align=\"left\"><span class=\"smalltext\"><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<td>\n<div align=\"right\"><span class=\"smalltext\"><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>Out of Poland come this solid thrash metal act and their debut full-length album <em>Path To The Unknown<\/em>. I\u2019d not been familiar with these guys previously and on first listen I wasn\u2019t too impressed by the vocal shouts of guitarist Bogdan Sroka which seem to overwhelm and dominate the record, and not in a positive way. Musically, the band are certainly competent when it comes to their level of playing tight, crunchy thrash, but those vocals seem too high in the mix and too generic and barky for my liking.<\/p>\n<p>Opening track \u2018Stupidity Regime\u2019 has a nice Anthrax-style of efficiency, particularly in the spine-snapping bass work, and the groove the band generates is easy on the ears, propelled by some solid leads. However, with there being so much generic thrash around nowadays tracks such as \u2018Rise Again\u2019 become more akin to irritating hardcore shouts; the outbursts of an angry youth not aware of his surroundings as he attempts to out-do everyone else on the block.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m somewhat thankful the album only features seven tracks as most of the time was spent attempting to blot out the confrontational macho vocals, if only to enjoy the lead work of Jakub Wr\u00f3bel.<\/p>\n<p>Other tracks of note are \u2018Fight For Liberty\u2019 and \u2018Weaker Ones\u2019 where Wr\u00f3bel really does excel himself, but I can\u2019t lie, when Sroka stops yelling I can enjoy this record more. Clearly his intention is to set fire to the ears, but unfortunately the vocal rants just spoil what is essentially a solid thrash album.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll be keeping tabs on Exul and see how they develop for next time round. Hopefully, Bogdan Sroka won\u2019t be imposing himself vocally to the detriment of others as evidenced here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EXULPath To The Unknown Self-released (2022)Rating: 6\/10 Out of Poland come this solid thrash metal act and their debut full-length album Path To The Unknown. I\u2019d not been familiar with these guys previously and on first listen I wasn\u2019t too impressed by the vocal shouts of guitarist Bogdan Sroka which seem to overwhelm and dominate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4902],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-exul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94504"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94506,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94504\/revisions\/94506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}