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| Dan is our usual Reuben correspondent, but I have persuaded our dear editor that in the interests of variety of opinion, someone else should get a go. So after a fair amount of cajoling, some begging, a little pretend crying and a brief handbag fight, I hold in my sweaty paws Reuben's second long-player. |
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It has so far been all too easy to pigeon-hole Reuben with alt-metal-emu-core (or something) acts such as Hundred Reasons and Hell Is For Heroes. Those who didn't fully delve into debut Racecar Is Racecar Backwards could have been easily led by hearing the riffs with the tunes, plonking them firmly into that category.
But those who did explore further found a more metal sensibility, better musicianship and, most importantly, better songs to those of any of their counterparts. Very Fast Very Dangerous sees them further establish an identity of their own, and proves they could possibly be the saviours of British heavy rock.
Yes, 'could possibly', rather than 'will' - Reuben still have a little way to travel before they can fit into those particular slippers. Although this is a cracking album, they have not yet written a classic.
Imagine, if you will, this album is a pie. I personally like steak pie, so we'll go for that. The initial smell as you pull the pie from the oven is the awesome rumbling bass intro of opener 'A Kick In The Mouth'. As you slice into your tasty pie, out comes the lovely thick gravy of the galloping tune-upon-tune-upon-riff of 'Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em', a stonker reminiscent in parts of Queens Of The Stone Age (pre-crapness).
But what's this chunk of carrot? Ah, the fairly boring 'Best Enemies In Town', which is saved only by the building riffage of its closing minute. This is followed up by some nice bits of mushroom and, hoorah!, a nice big chunk of riff-eye steak in the annoyingly-titled 'Every Time A Teenager Listens To Drum & Bass A Rockstar Dies'. Annoying only because I couldn't be arsed to type it.
Nooo - celery! Here comes the namby-pamby uninspired ballad 'Nobody Loves You'. This, along with the closing track, really gets my goat - I don't have a problem with ballads, but please, people, don't do them for the sake of it. I need a fair amount of convincing if my stream of metalicious riffs is to be broken, and this just doesn't grab me at all.
Anyway, what's with all these vegetables? Thankfully, next up is a massive cow-sized slice of riffery, busy drumming and scringing (a term I have invented for Jamie Lenman's ability to go between singing and screaming in a nanosecond) in the powerful 'Blamethrower'. The remainder of the pie, erm, album, continues to satisfy, bringing the screaming thrash metal of 'Alpha Signal Three', featuring perpetual vocal whore Karl Middleton (formerly of earthtone9). The second half is let down only by another stinky piece of ballad-celery as the closing track.
As you can see, I like beef, but I don't like celery (or at least in this pie). My problem with the celery is that if you make a whole pie out of celery, it is going to taste like arse. So why bother with any celery at all? Well, equally, a pie made with just meat would get too meaty, and you might reach some sort of beef saturation point, at which you begin to take on certain bovine features. Celery acts to break up and emphasise the satisfying meatiness of those steak chunks, and in some cases adds to the overall flavour, but you have to cook it properly or it still tastes like arse.
Overall though, this was still a highly satisfying pie. Answers on a postcard if you have the faintest idea of what I am talking about. |
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| Will McLaren - 8/10 |
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