Genre : Glam Rock with a Sludge affection
Label : Independent
Origin : United States
Official site : > - here - < and > - here - <
This review starts out with a verbatim quotation of the band biography snippet that has came with this review order.
In the Whale is a high energy, two piece rock band hailing from Denver, CO. Members Nate Valdez (vocals and guitar) and Eric Riley (drums and backing vocals) have been making no nonsense, balls-to-the-wall rock songs since they formed the band in 2011.
Since then, the two have stayed busy exploring the seedier sides of Denver that ¬inspires their music. In 2012 they released their first EP, ‘Cake’, and followed it up with the EP, ‘Eric’, in late fall 2013. In between releases the band has been featured in national commercials for Victory Motorcycles and have played with a stupid number of artists you'd happily phone home about. In addition to sharing stages with bands like Murder by Death,¬ Local H, Reverend Horton Heat and Electric Six, the band has hit the road and played alongside The Airborne Toxic Event, Agent Orange, Bob Log III, The Pack A.D. and Slash.
Read on to know more about the disc.
As promised by the band, the character of the music initially indeed is a high octane hit and run on silence done by an inflatable pink sledgehammmer, yet done in a way as to skillfully please a wide range of aesthetic cravings, channeled along both super-traditional and frantic musical rhetorics. The opener track sounds like as if your secret glam papi Elton Fucking John would have gotten himself into a bucket of cocaine, - I don't know if he'd ever done that, but this song is the effect I'd anticipate, IF he'd been - ending up in a state from which claiming the OH!, so inviting peakings of punk rock - that is some height to puke down from - is not only a possibility, but an obligation. The duo here showcases a competent command of the most intriguing glam harmonic structures - yes, both of those harmonic structures are displayed - and spice the stone-traditional-, nevertheless quite elegantly muscular build up with ballsy melodic screaming that surely puts a smile on the face of Peter Steele.
The second track is the most frequently visited contribution from the duo at this point. A playfully rabid song that summons the spirit of the beginnings of Beastie Boys. It is ALL about the woman!! You got that?? Orthodox pulsation, and the relentless craving of "TEH WOMAN". What's NOT to like? Women are the best, but it takes a man to recognize this. With this song, the duo does not take risks at all, in fact, this is their obligatory stimulus generator song that catches the interest of the general populace, - sup, perv! - yet it is the very last track on the EP that showcases the duo at the true top of their game.
In this final, third installment - see the link at the top - the formation summons a third ingredient into the equation, and this addition is as efficient as it is surprising! I dare claim that herein they exhibit both an affection for-, AND a solid command of sludge metal, which though is funnily and very efficiently assuaged by a style of vocal delivery that claims the freedom to keep the will to exist: intact. This is a relatively - haha - rare occasion in sludge, since, most of the time, you start playing sludge metal when you already have lost the will to exist. This is your ticket into playing sludge. If you find yourself enjoying listening to sludge metal, then bitchslap yourself! This nice collision of metaphoric life AND the similarly metaphoric denial/blaming of its illusionary shortcomings - the pain is where your ego lives, insect! - warrants a musical language that is capable to reek a genuine and relentless artistic identity, and this here third track definitely - for the socioculturally challenged: defanetly, definately, definaently, defintely, defatenly - equates with a direction that begs further exploration, in my opinion. So it is a rather surprising and elegant track, that serves as an unusually intriguing peaking point in the fabric of this EP.
The first track will compliment your Inner Elton John that you were so meticulously trying to hide. Reveal your Elton!! The second song is "just" publicity for the band, but there is nothing wrong with that, of course. The third song is the one in which they decide to play the type of music that manages to surprise THEM, so the effect is optimally contagious.
Check out the EP here.
GyZ at Bandcamp.
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