Go large for an extra dollar. Hidden Amongst Us must have paid that extra dollar if their album “The Machine” is to be seen as the receipt. Filled up with the kind of macho high conceptness that defined the hard rock into metal genres, it does what it does with testosterone fuelled precision.
However, there is more to this band than incipient proximity deafness. There is an underlying Orwellian message for a start and Brent Pettersson clearly takes the theatre as his cue for his high octane vocal stylings. You could even see this album as somewhat camp if it were not for the surfeit of power chord riffs that drive each and every song along. Nevertheless, Hidden Amongst Us is clearly a band with a purpose and it is that purpose, or more acutely sense of purpose, that provides the hitting power of this album.
Devoid of the histrionics that attract 14 year old boys to the genre, Hidden Amongst Us instead show themselves to be a metal band of maturity with a strong sense of melody, if not to the level of a Scandinavian band like Akribi, that makes their songs stick in your memory. Particular kudos are thus given to the near protest strut of “Powder” and to the stadium stomper “The Outside World is Gone”.
Thumbs up to this one and it is available as a free download.