Hands up how many bands you can name from Hungary? Thought so. The sticker emblazoned on the front cover of 'Our Island, Our Empire' by Hungary's Insane, proclaiming the release to be "Fonogram 2009 - Best Hungarian Metal Album" might as well have read "Best Ascension Island Metal Album" as there's really no true benchmark.

However, xenophobia and PR-baiting apart, what we have here is a pretty impressive showing from a band that have apparently been around since 1999 and seem to have a fair touring pedigree to boot as well. Once the album gets going this experience becomes pretty apparent too, with some pretty mature and diverse songs on offer. Stylistically there's a lot of Korn, Disturbed and metalcore in the mix and a dual vocal attack that lends something of a Funeral For A Friend vibe to quite a few songs. Also working in the band's favour is the production, which is corking. Fuck knows who twiddled the knobs on this but it is one of the best sounding albums I've heard in a while.

Song-wise there's some good stuff ('Something Is In The Wind' and 'Ready To Kill' are good metalcore cum FFAF cum Korn cum Faith No More), some bizarre shit ('Fuerteventura' could be the soundtrack to said island's tourist board video. I wonder if 'Benidorm' is being lined up for the next album) and quite frankly a couple of fillers ('Hocus Pocus' for instance). The band claim to have a wide range of influences and I do feel that, in attempting to pay homage to too many of them, the album does lack consistency. Which is a shame because when they keep it straightforward they can really rip it with the best, but before you know it they're off into a passage, which just seems out of place.

Not bad by any means and I get the feeling that if they could just filter their influences a tad they could really go places.

www.myspace.com/bandinsane