| |
|
|
Archived Reviews
|
French fronted Industrial rock is the order of the day here. Throw in some elements from Bjork and you have A Five Sense Fist’s sound to a tee. I heard a demo from this band some time back, and was impressed. The demo album I’ve been sent certainly impresses. It’s nice to hear a girl singing instead of the stereotypical male ranting vocals that adorn so many new Industrial acts. The vocals have an innocence to them – so akin to Bjork it’s not funny. But the selling point is that these vocals also borrow elements from NIN (Trent Reznor) and occasionally Robert Smith’s (Cure) singing style. This is good, because it creates a full bodied style that is a joy to listen to. The music is well constructed, and is highly varied while hanging onto the Industrial Rock label. Of the sixteen tracks on here, I guess 4 could be classed as filler tracks (ranging from 40 seconds to 1 minute 20 seconds in length) – the rest are full bodied tracks, leaving us with 12 ‘proper’ tracks. Some of the music is sexy and sleazy (the track ‘The Classic Clash’ for instance), while other tracks definitely have more of a Rock edge to them. There is the occasional track with no vocals at all (such as ‘System OD’)– 3 minutes of mood music might be okay for some, but for me it does not help to showcase a band like this to any great degree. In future it would be best to leave this kind of thing to the ambient genre. Just my opinion. But can we get up and mosh? Well, not really. I find it hard to class any of the tracks on this album as ‘dance floor fillers’ – the music is good, and I guess tracks such as ‘Liar’ come close with it’s frantic beats and angry vocals, and even ‘Power’ might come close, but while these tracks have energy, I find they don’t quite have the energy to grab you kicking and screaming to the dance floor. The rest of the album uses the tracks like works of art, painting music for you to step back and appreciate. Take ‘Submachine Gun’ for example, which definitely has an electronic up-tempo, multilayered feel to it. This does break the album up quite nicely, and adds another dimension to the tracks on here. In all then, this is a good album, and A Five Senses Fist definitely deserve your attention. I look forward to hearing what else this band can produce. They might be finding their feet currently, but given the style they have introduced us to, I just hope that they do not deviate from this path too much – as they are they’re definitely onto a winner. Keep up the good work! |
