Fuzzy,
tinny tasters of a band clearly capable of melodic
grandeur and invention. Easy on the flanger, boys.
First off, my apologies to the band for the months between their sending me these
demos and this review actually hitting the site. It's nothing personal, just
organisational.
November Moment are a Notts four-piece of equal parts grunge, metal and emo who
share vocal duties between their two frontmen, Adam Barnes and Aidan Blenkinsopp.
The band's first demo, the two-year old November Moment, is a bit of
a mess. As far as you can tell, the songs are pretty good. "Ellipses" boasts
a grinding riff that wouldn't shame Alice In Chains, "The Redeeming Tide" concludes
with an excellent Soundgarden-ish eastern riff, and "Breaking Fall" sports
some nice harmonies and great song-writing. However, the whole demo is marred
by production problems. The drums seem to fluctuate between being inaudible and
being far too closely-miked, and there's at least one member of the NM camp with
a serious addiction to effects boxes. The guitars are periodically subsumed with
flange, chorus and phasing, and even the vocals get the spacey treatment during "Snare" (sounding
a bit silly as a result). The songs are fully-conceived but under-rehearsed,
and sometimes the playing sounds a little loose. The other recurrent problem
is the guitar tone of the distortion channel. As soon as the "lets get loud" pedals
are pressed, the top-heavy guitars cut through everything else, despite having
little weight behind them to add any serious dynamic boost.
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