Creative, catchy, interesting and with just a simple flaw… lack of consistency!

Drain is Costa Rica’s 1n54n0 second full length album since their creation back in 2000, and song by song it blows you away; some might be a little skeptical about giving this album and this band a chance, since their description is metalcore/thrash, even thou this record has little to none thrash riffs in it; excelling in production and a certain progressive idea fussed with remarkable simple yet interesting songs Drain is worthy of time and money.

I believe the closest that we can get to compare this record with something that you might have listen to would be to compare them with Ministry, even thou they are a bit more diverse when it comes to song structure, but the use of “electric” elements does bring that legendary band to mind. The record is full of surprises, diverse songs that maintain the “electro/metallic” sound going through it as it progresses into more than just simple metal with good ideas… and yes the production is awesome, clean, creative, well layered and it simply allows you to listen to the album without having to guess what is playing or how is been played.

Stigma and Organic are two of the best tracks I have listen in a long time that manage to combine clean vocals with…yes one more time ELECTRIC elements, making the songs sweet but at the same time never loosing aggression, truly great songs. What I mean by lack in consistency as I pointed out at the beginning of this review, is that every song has so much elements, so many tempo changes, different vocal approaches and backup elements that makes it hard to smash together and come up with a definitive idea of the type of music the guys from 1n54n0 are proposing; but that does get out of the way once you spin this record as much as I did!

To sum it up, Drain is a refreshing record that should give you some great times trying to pin down exactly a correct and comfortable label for this band, truly one of Costa Rica’s best heavy albums I have ever heard.