EP Review: The Vice – A Great Unrest

March 6, 2025 Dan Barnes Album Reviews 0

EP Review: The Vice - A Great Unrest

Reviewed by Dan Barnes

A little more than a year after the release of their Dead Canary Run album, Swedish blackened gothic pop metallers, The Vice, begin the quest to explore new sounds and textures in their music with this five-track EP, A Great Unrest.

Featuring three new songs, a cover and a reimagining of an established track, The Vice have also become a quartet with the recruitment of a second guitarist, Joel Öhman, giving their sound here a lusher and inviting vibe.

Opening with the title track, the listener is greeted with an instant, pounding, rock & roll statement of intent, which blends in some eerie, gothic sensibilities from the outset. Rikard’s vocals are hushed for the most part, creating a darkly enticing character to the tune. From the Barricades follows, a snappy guitar and a serpentine slither over an insatiable beat.

Sure to become a crowd favourite is Tropic of Coal, which arrives with fatter and more prominent guitars, even managing to slot in the EP’s only solo as it settles itself into being A Great Unrest’s central, defining tune.

EP Review: The Vice - A Great Unrest

Closing tune, Welcome the Storm is a reimagining of the deep cut from the previous record and, in place of Dead Canary Run’s scorching delivery, here is only jangling, sliding guitars, evoking a western feel among its pulsing beats and haunting female vocals. It’s quiet, yet unsettling at the same time, and there’s always the sense that the song will explode with an as-yet restrained force; that doesn’t happen, save for the intersecting of fragile clean guitar lines and dark, ominous chords. The track – and EP - plays out with a mournful piano, which is sort of fitting.

The missing song from the five is 1 Sun, a cover of the 2015 Miley Cyrus – which my search history now includes a record of – song that now I cannot unhear. To be fair to The Vice, theirs is a slow and doom-laden run through, not closely engaged with the original, instead a more Leonard Cohen delivery, creeping and melancholic.

At less than twenty-minutes in length, A Great Unrest is a bite-sized sample of The Vice’s new direction yet contains plenty of interesting ideas that will hopefully be further explored on future Extended Plays.

For all the latest news, reviews, interviews across the heavy metal spectrum follow THE RAZORS'S EDGE on facebook, twitter and instagram.

Related Articles

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*