Tenet Album Review

Tenet – Sovereign

Album review by Rant Chick

tenet-sovereign

Sovereign is the debut album of Tenet; the ongoing side- project of former Strapping Young Lad guitarist Jed Simon, who currently guitars for Canadian metal band Zimmers Hole. Simon’s brainchild has been, pretty much, a one-man show for a while but with the help of a team of metal veterans, the guitarist has finally been able to realise his ideas in the form of an album. Tenet’s musos boast an impressive CV: Gene Hlogan, who is currently drumming for Fear Factory, is best known for his work with the bands Dark Angel, Death, Dethklok and Testament; Byron Stroud, also a Strapping Young Lad ex, is the bassist for Fear Factory and Zimmers Hole; guitarist Glen Alvelais has played for Forbidden, Testament and X-3; and vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza was the lead singer for the thrash metal bands Legacy (later known as Testament) and Exodus. With all this impressiveness and name-dropping, one naturally expects a great deal from Sovereign. But it’s an anticlimax. The album is disappointingly dull and a more suitable title is “I was bored after song 2”. The five veterans of metal bring a host of outside influences and experience to the project and the result is an old-school thrash sound that mixes in some death metal and punk, in other words, it’s super-duper speedy. So speedy in fact that the nine songs featured on the album eventually blur into one veeery looong song. Zetro’s vocals are just as consistent … consistently **yawn** sleep inspiring. Listening to this album is like attending a hypnotherapy session and falling into a deep trance, only to snap out of it and realise that it’s over but you aren’t quite sure what exactly is over. There is no doubt that Tenet will sell some albums, do some tours, and fans will be excited by this project, a lasting-impression, however, is not something that Sovereign is able to muster.