“It’s like a warm hug from a monster,” explains Ran Yerushalmi. Digging into the love for heavy music in the YouTube documentary which accompanies his band’s powerful third album A Reminder, Walkways’ meditative frontman is setting a target for his songs, too.
Unbending metalheads in modern Tel Aviv, life for Ran and his bandmates is coloured by isolation, anger and the psychological weight of existence in a battle-scarred Middle East. Rather than being consumed by the fires of catharsis, however, there is a stubborn belief that crunching riffs and soaring vocals should be the universal salve, a shared language of hope and brotherhood able to bridge borders, as relevant in America or Australia as Israel.
Admirable as that philosophy is, it drives a weirdly inconsistent listening experience. At their best, Walkways sound ready to rock arenas. Advance single A Fuck You, A Thank You hits like a three-way dance between Alter Bridge, Devin Townsend and Slipknot, flipping between pop-metal munch, proggy experimentation and undiluted vitriol. A Devil’s Mist (Fire) is similarly accomplished, capturing the theatrical pomposity of Fall Out Boy or Panic! At The Disco in a nihilist metallic banger about how humanity is a scourge upon the Earth.