If there is one thing I enjoy, it’s being given an album by a
band that is as hard to classify as Sweden’s Blowsight. Any band that can manage to put out an album of thirteen
songs such as their album Life &
Death (fourteen tracks including the bonus track) and have just about every
song sound different from the other is not an easy task. I couldn’t properly
decide on a true genre for the band; I mean they are definitely alternative
metal, or alternative punk, but they feature elements of pop and show other
surprises the more you listen to them.
It’s very obvious, after listening to the band Skrou, how much influence the band
takes from the 80’s. A time when rock songs were big and hair metal reigned
supreme. Before grunge came and changed music (you can argue for better or
worse, but that isn’t the point of this article) it was more common for rock
bands to have fun and sound like they were having fun. It kind of trailed into
pop metal, or glam metal, with acts like Autograph
or Vixen adding in a lot of
keyboards to their already pop-oriented rock hooks. Before this, though, with
bands like Ratt in their earliest
days andMötley Crüe, to name a few,
recorded a lot of songs, though most were centred on partying and sex, which
would eventually become a complete cliché. Despite the lyrics, the songs were
always big; I mean layered guitars, over emphasized drums: big. And I feel this
is all what Skrou are trying to encompass.
When decoded
leader Derek Jordan first emailed me
to listen to Topanga, his bands new
EP, he made it a point to mention that Dead Sara were a major influence on their sound. That is an intriguing statement
to make, as I find Dead Sara to be easily one of modern rocks most all around
talented band, possibly the most talented band to have debuted this decade.
After having listened to the six-track EP, I could kind of see what he meant.
In a time when heavy punk music is unfortunately turning out far
too many whiny sung pop induced outfits, one must wonder what happened to not
long ago when bands like Eighteen
Visions and Atreyu were making
music; bands that included a lot of screaming in to their music, as well as a
lot of clean singing, all while being taken seriously by many music fans and
not just kids. Now we have bands like Escape
the Fate and Blessthefall who
have a tendency to produce a lot of plastic songs, much like a pop song heard
on a top 40 station, and it’s unfortunate that these bands take such influence
from the likes of the previously mentioned Atreyu or Alexisonfire, and they are the closest thing we have to new music
of the similar genre. That being said, it is always good to discover a band
that can capture the serious side of the heavy punk, some may call “post-hardcore”
sound. The most recent band that I have come across that features such aspects
is California’s Fake Figures.
