Aloud “Fan the Fury” (Lemon Merchant, 2008)

Not sure if this really should be allowed

Modern rock music, so much of it of the same pattern, starts up ratchets higher, pours on paddling pools full of guitars, drenched with effects, thick vocals, multi-tracked, harmonised, a globulous mass of musical phlegm. Aloud are no better or worse; they have vast reserves of bluster, huge lungs, the Edge’s battery of effects pedals, a dynamic that shifts the needle into the red at every opportunity. An oasis of calm when it occasionally appears is a rhetorical device existing only to contrast with the frenetic, as on the title track, the quiet isn’t the eye of the storm; it’s the ad break before returning to the narrative, the narrative of barely restrained hysteria.

‘Hard Up in the 2000’s’ reaches levels of ridiculousness where poverty is not having money for the parking meter. Even the tag team male/female vocals employed on ‘You Got Me Wrong’ collapses because both voices are pitched toward strain, both the same and similarity really is the problem here the songs blend into one another a wall of guitars that barely even sound guitar-like, processed, this is mechanically reclaimed rock music, the last remaining scraps sucked off its rotting corpse.

Date review added:  Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Reviewer:  David Cowling
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  From a whisper to a scream