RAUNCHY

Circa the summer of 2004, Danish quintet RAUNCHY was making hay with the song "Summer of Overload" from their sophomore studio platter, "Confusion Bay". Aired at repeated intervals on the still-surviving Music Choice and included on a half-dozen CD samplers (remember those?),"Summer of Overload" was a faithful ode to this time of year: "Chicks on love drugs / hoes in tank tops / brunette rednecks / redhead school chicks." Partially dodgy pre-choruses aside, the song represented a wider swath of European modern metal that looked sustainable with sleek production, interesting riffs, bounties of melodies and an array of vocals that were even sweeter than the clean-chorus brigade emanating from American metalcore and even Swedish melodic death metal. While RAUNCHY was quick to follow up "Confusion Bay" with 2006's "Death Pop Romance" and 2008's "Wasteland Discotheque", by 2014, the shine had worn off them and their peers in MNEMIC, SONIC SYNDICATE and SYBREED. RAUNCHY quietly went into hibernation.

The band has since re-signed with their original label, Mighty Music, for the release of "Prisoner". Produced by the ubiquitous Jacob Hansen (AMON AMARTH, ARCH ENEMY),"Prisoner" naturally sounds like a million bucks, as it has to support the mounds of keyboards and vocal layers from Mike Semesky, who took over the frontman spot in 2013. Semesky is perhaps even poppier and more saccharine than his predecessors Lars Vognstrup and Kasper Thomsen. He lays it on thick in quite a few spots here. "Stranded" culls a futuristic vibe, while "Frameworker" executes the good cop / bad cop vocal trade-off with ease. Semesky may not be able to rescue the plodding and quirky "Masquerade", and the chorus to "Darkest Self" has too many hints of EMO, but his aggressive strokes-into-clean vocals on "Revealing I" suggest that RAUNCHY are at their best when sticking with the tried-and-true formula.

RAUNCHY's calling card is that they're an amalgamation. While melodic death metal is likely the core foundation here, the piped-in metalcore, industrial and pop elements keep things in constant motion, all of these cuts are over the four-minute mark, with a multitude of parts and arrangements. It's what keeps the Danes from falling too deeply into the pop-metal rabbit hole and may also be why they didn't move up a few rungs on the Euro metal ladder. Nevertheless, it's easy to get into the choruses of "Frostbite" and "Higher Truths", where RAUNCHY are at their best.

There is a slight sense of nostalgia in RAUNCHY's return to recorded output. The early-to-mid-2000s were exciting, occasionally heady times, particularly for those who were eager to shove nu-metal out of the door. There was a brief moment in time when a band like RAUNCHY represented the future of metal. Nevertheless, the band remains as multifaceted as ever on "Prisoner". And let's not forget that "Summer of Overload" is still a great song.