Attack! Attack! UK
“Honesty didn’t get me anywhere… I know, because I read it in your diary…” goes the disingenuous opening vocal line of the eponymous début album from Cardiff’s Attack! Attack!. Well, maybe honesty didn’t get them anywhere in the fictional space of the song itself, but the album as a whole just goes to show what a difference some musical honesty can make.
You see, the thing that’s been annoying me more and more about the pop-rock explosion is the horrible glossy finish that gets slapped all over everything. It’s like some Pixar-produced CGI facsimile of itself, each iteration sounding further and further from what a band with instruments actually sound like. No such problems for Attack! Attack!, though – unless my review copy has been mastered wrong by accident, their first offering has a nice saturated tone to it that makes me slightly nostalgic for my days of listening to the Evening Session on a cheap FM radio.
Seriously, I’m not kidding – Attack! Attack! play amped-up guitars and bass that actually sound like amped-up guitars and bass; the drums are real drums, and not retriggered, quantized and pitch-perfect samples; and in the pacey sections the compressed cymbals splash and suck like the tide between the piles of an old pier. Attack! Attack! sound like… well, they sound like a proper rock band.
And it’s amazing how much of a difference that makes to my perception of their tunes, which aren’t particularly innovative or original (though perfectly competent for the style). Everything comes across with an unfeigned sense of passion and energy – Attack! Attack! sound like they wrote this stuff from the heart, and they play it like it’s their last chance to leave the planet before the asteroid hits. Listen to the riff from recent single “This Is A Test”, or the opening of “Say It To Me”: that’s how a pop-punk riff should be played. You can almost feel the soreness in your fingertips as they grate over the frets, the ache in your wrists and ankles as you batter the drumkit…
Attack! Attack! isn’t the perfect album, but compared to all the stuff I’ve heard from the same bracket in recent months, they’re streets ahead. Oh, sure, the songs are youth incarnate: “From Now On” sees the honesty meme raise its head again, and there’s plenty of ambiguous pop-punk relationship cheddar (“Lights Out”, for example). But that energy makes almost any sin forgiveable – if you’re old enough, Attack! Attack! will make you remember why you loved early Feeder, Cooper and Foo Fighters.
Attack! Attack! are a timely reminder that rock and pop can meet halfway without crashing into one another in a tangle of dismembered integrity and intentions. The whole album roars through fast with its foot to the floor, and all of a sudden you’re sat in the silence following the final note, and seriously thinking about putting it back on again. And why the hell not, eh?
Review By RockMetalMusic
Artist: Attack! Attack!
Album: Attack! Attack!
Genre: Alternative Rock / Powerpop / Pop Punk
MySpace: http://myspace.com/attackattackband
-Track List-
1. Honesty
2. You and Me
3. This Is a Test
4. Too Bad Son
5. From Now On
6. Say It to Me
7. Lights Out
8. Home Again
9. Lost for Words
10. Time Is Up
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Saosin
Intensity. In some ways it’s wasted on the young. What have these kids got to be so intense about anyway? Or maybe it’s actually easy to forget that youth is the period that breeds the reasons behind the pains and troubles that carry most of us through the rest of our lives, and that this intensity is therefore valid.
Either that or it could be that it is rapidly becoming nigh on impossible to review yet another band of youths from the USA, intent on carrying their message to the world through the medium of guitars that teeter on the brink of truly rocking, yet ultimately err on the side of safety, without the review descending into a series of esoteric ramblings about the nature of the human condition.
In an attempt to return to the point, Saosin are actually an excellently produced, wonderfully polished outfit, who have created an album full of driving, guitar led melodies, wonderful harmonies, and soaring choruses. Within their genre and musical peer group they are faultless, but sadly this album seems to lack any of the qualities of true musical greatness or longevity.
Reviewed by Rich Edge
Artist: Saosin
Album: Self-Titled
Genre: Post-Hardcore / Alternative Rock / Psychedelic
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/saosin
-Track List-
1. It’s Far Better To Learn
2. Sleepers
3. It’s So Simple
4. Voices
5. Finding Home
6. Follow And Feel
7. Come Close
8. I Never Wanted To
9. Collapse
10. You’re Not Alone
11. Bury Your Head
12. Some Sense Of Security
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