Allele – Next To Parallel
Rating: 
a good rock album that should have been much better.
Let’s be honest with each other, Allele’s debut album was fantastic. Although noobs in the hard rock community, they made all manner of rock bands quake in their boots. The album had clearly commercial melodies, but it also had bite, a commodity which is often lacking in radio rock. They had “it”, but this begged a further question: could they hold on to “it”? Based on the excellence of Point of Origin, it would only make sense that their next release would either be equal to, or greater than their debut album. Unfortunately, this is not the case, but don’t give up hope just yet. Next To Parallel may not be able to reach the of heights of Point of Origin, but it’s still a decent effort.
Notably, Next To Parallel feels much darker than their debut. From thick guitar riffs to hammered bass notes, the music bleeds, which is more welcome than you might imagine. You see, Allele have lost their edge with this release. Sure, it feels darker, but underneath the layers of mud is a very average rock album. Screams are used sparingly, and the drumming is honestly quite boring. Nothing about their music stands out enough so that one say that Allele have a unique style. They seem content with being an ordinary hard rock band, and although they do it fairly well, it is sad to hear them wasting their potential. Especially considering that Allele originally labeled their music as “hard rock with a new feel”. What happened to them?
On the bright side, Allele know how to write strong choruses, and they do so for the first nine tracks (the rest are filler). Considering their strong reliance on choruses, this makes songs good although, admittedly, predictable. They occasionally crank up the distortion in tracks like ‘Feed The Wolves’ and ‘Chains of Alice’, but that’s about as interesting as songs get. Variation is nonexistent in Next To Parallel, and as much as I’d like to shrug it off, I just can’t. Allele have given us a collection of thirteen tracks, but only nine of them are good – figures.
