Sometimes loud fast and screamy, sometimes a lot slower and melodic, Japanese quintet COLDRAIN are showing quite an eclectic and diverse range of influences on their 4^th album, "Vena", which shows them to be other than "just another metalcore act."

The tracks range from unmelodic and crushingly heavy, through to melodic and downright miserable. While the heavier sections are definitely enough to get the head going whilst listening to them with some pretty decent screamed passages, the melodic and sung sections do give the group the air of whiney little pre-teens trying to pour out angst- and not of anything specific or valid- here it feel like it's a set of complaints for the sake of complaints (think the annoying teen we all once were- yes, I am looking at you...)

Other than the occasionally annoying attempts at depth which come off as merely a slightly miserable kind of melodic hard rock, "Vena" is a half decent album. Song "Runaway" even features PAPA ROACH's Jacoby Shaddix adding an extra layer of vocals to the track and showing that these guys are gaining some serious traction in the West, and it isn't an impossibility that they will start to blow up in Europe and America.

While the songs are fairly mixed in their styles and the heaviness that they go to, they are also fairly mixed in their success. The heavier moments are pretty good modern metal with some tight riffs and competent screams, and lots of the melodies are powerful (even if the vocal tone is complaining and the subjects make the band seem pretty vapid)