Band Name: Burning Circle

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/theburningcircleoflife

Reviewer: Keef

Review:

Their influences read like a ‘who’s who’ of classic rock legends. And right from the first vocal, you can see why. OK, so the timekeeping might not be 100% perfect, but if you have an ounce of rock in your body and ears that haven’t been permanently damaged from turning it up to eleven, you’ve got to admire the absolute talent in the lead vocals!

I have to say I was particularly blown away by the more baladdy (that is now a word) tracks. There’s a fine line to be drawn between a piss take classic rock voice and a REAL classic rock voice and ‘Sale’ has an almost perfect ‘classic’ rock voice that would have graced any band from the list that the band cites as their influences! Honestly!

The music is a cross between classic 70s anthemic rock and the more edgy metal that came to the fore about 5 years ago. Cultural differences aside (this band originates in the former Eastern Block), ‘Burning Circle’ would have no problem selling their music anywhere in the world. No review would be complete without a critisism, but all I can really fault is the slightly lax timekeeping (can’t you tell I’m a drummer) in the odd section and the fact that some of the vocals highlight the fact that English is not these guys’ first languege, so the lyrics sound a bit contrived and don’t make 100% sense. Other than that, it gets my approval!  Well done guys!

Keef

Band Name: Outrageous Rhinoceros

Myspace: www.myspace.com/outrageousrhinoceros

Reviewer: Keef

Review:

I guess when the band’s ‘Sounds Like’ list doesn’t include anyone that you’ve ever heard of, it’s not the very best of places to start from.

They describe themselves as “Psychedelic / Rock / Grindcore”, but all I got was more Angle Grinder than ‘Grindcore’.

I guess it’s yet another one of those genre pidgeonholes that people make up when they’re trying desperatley not to get themselves put into any other pidgeonholes.

Anyway – what about the music?

The first track, ‘Peanut City’ comes right out of nowhere, shows immense promise and really rips along – but it sort of wanders around after the first few bars, not exactly going anywhere new.

The overall feel of the track is ‘confusing’ – I say that because it just becomes a bit of a hash of different time signatures which, unless done perfectly, just sound like poor timing and a desperate attempt to make the music more intersting than it actually is.   Don’t get me wrong, there’s some great riff ideas in there – but it seriously sounds like they picked about half a dozen of their favourite practice jam tunes and then just threw them together, with no real thought about how the overall track suffers as a result – which is quite badly, in all honesty…..

‘Pete Around the Bush’ is the other track sent for review.

Now, we’ve all played in bands where we’ve downtuned guitars for songs, whether that’s for a vocal pitching issue, to make a particular guitar part less difficult, or just because we wanted to – but I always got the idea that everyone tuned down to the same key?   Seems that the guys forgot this – and we’ve got a whole bunch of guitars all doing their individual thing as the start to this song.

It kind of settles down for the dominant riff, but there’s either some tuning issues or a lack of understanding of harmonies going on pretty much throughout the whole song, making what could have been a decent enough tune sound ‘wrong’.

Now – live, it might be a different matter, but when you’re listening to a recording, it’s easy to be more picky – and on the strength of two tracks, it’s hard to get a feel as to whether this tuning is a deliberate thing or not.   Again, we have the overly complicated time signature changes which don’t really add any relevance to anything and show up even the slightest timing issues.

OK – overall, this isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard – but neither is it the best example of this music I’ve ever listened to.

The vocals, whilst trying hard to emulate Joe Alselmo in the shouting stakes, don’t do anything other than that – and when the guitars are doing their weird ‘off-key’ thing in the background, it makes the shouting even less appealing. AT least with Pantera, there were some far more tuneful moments that made the contrast between the two forms hit off each other and ‘work’.

The musicianship from the rest of the band is OK – not the tightest, but a lot of that is only really highlighted by the mish-mash of time signatures in each song and will only improve with time.

My advice would be to rip that first song to shreds and take the dozen or so promising ideas and make them individual tracks.

Calm down with the 23/57 time signatures that change every couple of bars, as even headbanging needs a rhythm to go along to, try to mix up those vocals and make sure you REALLY listen to how the guitars interact with each other and with the vocals………

Keef