|
Blood on the Blade E-zine - My Obsession |
|
|
|
|
Saturday, 31 March 2001 |
I bought this demo at the concert on which this Dutch band performed with After All, Mac-11 and Wicked Mystic. Their music impressed me so much, that I decided to buy their demo right away. They describe their music as "groovy Metal". I cannot totally agree with that term, even though it has a certain groove. Their music is pretty hard to describe anyway, it has something from almost every kind of Metal in it. The sound quality is for a demo very good and if Ivor van Beek makes his
vocals a little cleaner (he did that live, and it sounded a lot better), this band is near a perfect one. The lyrics of the demo are all about persons in a psychiatric hospital and all the songs are part of a concept album that is supposed to be released in the near future. I really hope this band gets a record deal and releases some albums so we can have more of this very original band. Until that time, I'd like to recommend everyone to buy this demo.
SONG-BY-SONG
Scar-Faced Man: After a short spoken intro (probably the "scar-faced man" himself), a heavy riff with some great twin guitars enters. The '80's Metal dominate this great song and the clean guitar interlude sounds great. Heavy and melodic, the way I like it.
Sympathy: This song (written by guitarist Martin van Beek) is a song with some wonderful clean guitar interludes (and a ditto intro and outro). In this song, Ivor shows his voice like it's supposed to sound. Slight comparations to Opeth come up to me in this song, but the band still has its own good sound.
My Obsession: The title song of the demo is probably also the fastest (and longest) song of the album. The riffing is pretty one-of-a-kind and Ivor shows that his not-so-clean voice can sound good. It sounds a little silly that he sings "You're the girl I want to be", but that's the concept, so why
not?
Red Alert: Together with the title song the longest song of the album, but this song is obviously slower. The bass riffs sound great (produced rightly to the foreground) and Ivor does some good clean vocals in the beginning and there is a nice solo in the outro.
Rebel: This is probably the simplest song of the album and lyrically not the best one, but the riffs sound very good and there are some nice guitar solos in it. And some twin guitars, which always do good with me (if they sound harmonic, and they do, so...). The end of the song is pretty abrupt, but it sounds good.
Kevin Pasman April 2001
|