Combining Strapping Young Lad and Soilwork in an attempt to make melodic Metal with an Industrial punch? It sounds just interesting enough to work, but unfortunately for French four-piece Dagoba, here on their third full-length, there’s something missing. Whatever the reason, throughout the fifty-odd minutes here there’s little that will catch your attention. After a few laboured listens, I can blame vocalist Shawter for this, having a typical Metalcore bellow and some rather, no, actually very poor clean singing that tends to take your attention from the pretty good backing instrumentation. Although guitarist and drummer Izakar and Franky are skilled and batter away convincingly (if the next Fear Factory album has half this much aggression on it then it’ll be their best for years) the actual Industrial elements aren’t implemented that well and tend to be tinkly keyboards in the background rather than anything as impressive as Devin Townsend’s former horde of madmen.

In fact, it seems that a little too influence has been taken from the more commercial end of Metal. I like a good bounce around as much as the next guy, and am actually rather a big Fear Factory fan, but when a band's best attempt at songwriting comes out as the rubbish that is Silence, a simply dreadful song that takes the worst aspects of Stonesour-esque Modern Metal and coats them in Dagoba’s overproduced keyboards, then don't expect kudos from me. Previous album What Hell Is About at least featured Dimmu Borgir’s ICS Vortex on guest vocals, which makes me want to hear it just for that – Face The Colossus doesn't have guest vocals, and has just two good tracks, the early title track which is less annoying than the others, and the riff-laden The Crash, with a rather nice orchestral outro. The rest of the songs are sadly dull. Heavy, yes, but there are plenty of bands out there that are more than capable of making good songs from Extreme Metal ingredients, and as such there is no point whatsoever in listening to Dagoba. Unless you're reviewing them, in which case I pity you, brother.