Manumit: Digital & Hostile

South Wales techno-metallers pushing all the wrong buttons

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For every genre cross-pollination act that succeeds, e.g. Skindred and Crossfaith, there are plenty more who fail miserably.

The trick to really nailing it is to offer the listener something unique, but the members of Manumit can’t seem to rustle up an original idea between them. For the most part their metal-meets-EDM shtick heavily apes Pendulum right down to the soulless vocals, but without the big hooks. There are the odd sound effects that sound like they’ve been pinched directly from an online Skrillex soundboard, and the awful high-pitched vocals of When I’m Gone recall early 00s novelty Euro techno. Furthermore, while the band’s bio assures us that they do have a guitarist, for the most part he’s barely audible, resulting in the sort of guitar drought that has you salivating to hear a riff. With sounds that are already out of date with a constantly evolving dance scene, not to mention there being little here to excite any self-respecting metal fan, Digital & Hostile unfortunately sees the band fall into a limbo land of ambivalence.

Via Lost Generation