Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Music is everywhere, even those who profess not to like it cannot avoid it for as Trapt prove with heavy eloquent ease, it is in our blood, it runs amok in our veins, it tears the heart and brains apart and crushes any sign of dissent; it is the lifeblood of the Universe and it is in our DNA.

The building blocks of life, the genetic coding which determines what are physically if not emotionally, all can be stripped down and given a name but it doesn’t replace the way that actions and effects can have on the mind and make even the strongest doubt themselves or the so called weakest find courage when everybody else shrinks into the background.

It is the cause and effect that makes us who we are but DNA is the start and for the band’s seventh album, the start is the key and it is with a flourish, a brandishing of the lightning sword, that the album kicks off in fine and unequivocal honour.

It is the burden of the past which at times keeps us from fulfilling any potential in our future, the best we can sometimes hope for is to keep on a steady pace and be seen as parading that same self confidence in which others were first attracted to us by. It is that self confidence, the possession of all the right notes and dramatic musical urge that runs through Trapt’s album and continues the 20 odd year career with enthusiasm and the direct rock voice.

In tracks such as Human (Like The Rest Of Us), Changing Hands, the superb Anchor and Fallen Angel, the urge to rip open the past and cheerfully mock it, taunt it to its own distraction is one played out with glee, for DNA is not just a continuation of the same path, it is one that has started a new juncture, a sense of new possibility, this is the building blocks torn down and started again, each strand restored and ordered to be stronger than before. It is a command that makes the heart beat that little faster.

DNA is what makes us unique, slightly different to everybody else and which separates us from those that went before, DNA is a moment reborn.

Ian D. Hall