Time to dig into the UK hard rock underground! Since I will be spending some time waiting for the album that I want to do a review of to arrive in the mail, I figured it might be a good idea to dig into the underbelly of the UK hard rock scene and bring to your attention a few bands that you might be interested in looking out. The two bands I'm definitely going to review are The Treatment and New Device, although I might look at Heaven's Basement and Jettblack depending on how long I have to wait for my order to arrive. I also might take a look at local pop punk band Epilogue's debut, although I will only do that if I get through everything else and still am waiting...
New Device are a pretty new band to the hard rock scene, forming in late 2007 and releasing their debut album in 2009, with then-drummer for Funeral for a Friend Ryan Richards doing the drums for the album. After that, the band pretty much toured and replaced members until February 2011, when the band decided to start work on material for their third album. After a new line up was announced in April 2012, the band recorded their second album, which was released in May 2013. This is that second album.
The band's sound is probably best summed up as hard rock with a bit of sleaze and traditional heavy metal thrown in and (dare I say it?) a hint of post-grunge for flavour (before anyone starts packing their bags and running, it's largely restricted to Daniel Leigh's vocals: although I don't think he's trying to go for a post-grunge voice deliberately, his habit of singing in a powerful bellow is very reminiscent of a lot of post-grunge vocalists and will probably be a factor in making or breaking the band for you if you dislike post-grunge...). When you consider that post-grunge is a style of hard rock (and one that has more influence from glam metal than you would think, too...), you would think it shouldn't be too hard to combine it with hard rock and sleaze metal (or even glam metal, if you don't mind the odd looks you'd inevitably get...). Do New Device do it well? Well...yes and no. Like with a lot of the UK hard rock from the underground that has reached my ears, it does sound a tiny bit too similar to what other bands are doing to get me wanting to triumph them over other bands, but I can't deny that they do a good job at it!
*Rant alert: skip this paragraph if you want the actual review and don't want to read me deconstructing the UK hard rock underground and why I don't think it's going to amount to much.*
As much as a lot of people like to say that the UK underground hard rock scene is a haven of brilliant hard rock that will one day cause a supernova of talent, the truth is that a lot of the bands that I've heard don't really get beyond being just good. Don't get me wrong, there ARE good bands in the UK underground hard rock scene, but even the best received bands from the scene that reach my ears just leave me wanting a more original take on the scene. Considering Volbeat are a highly successful band and have a rather unique style (I like to refer to it as metal n roll, personally...), I feel letting bands who do hard rock that sounds similar to everyone else get as much praise as them is not really fair, as it doesn't really encourage other bands to try to find their own sound. And that, to be honest, is the big issue I have: I know that bands CAN find their own style (as much as a lot of people like to say that you can't in this day and age...) if they put the work in to making sure they do it (case of point, how many of the original members of the Bay Area thrash scene sounded particularly similar to each other during the heyday of the genre (the 80's and 1990, for those who aren't sure when that is...)? Beyond the fact they're all playing thrash, I'd say the answer is "none"!), but next to nobody is really putting in that effort. And that's partially why I think the whole scene is unlikely to amount to anything at the minute: nobody is trying to find their own spin on the genre (either by mixing in influence from the genres that influenced hard rock in general (like blues, folk, rock n roll and classical music) to give the music some more quiet twists to keep you interested beyond the first listen or by combining influences from appropriate metal genres to create a darker take on it...), which tends to mean that, once you get past the excitement of "OMG, IT'S HARD ROCK FROM THE UK! HARD ROCK ISN'T DEAD, BITCHES!!1!!1!!!1!!!", you're not left with anything to really keep you wanting to return to it, as you'll usually find someone else doing the same thing, only slightly better. Maybe I'm over-thinking this all a bit, but I honestly think that the scene needs a band to take a good look beyond the hard rock genres and incorporate influences from other genres and start to become a major player in the music scene before the scene will take a hint and then will start to become a major player in the music scene. If you will, so many bands take influence from the hard rock and metal aspects of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath that they miss the fact that those bands wrote songs that didn't focus purely on being the genres they are, but had songs which aren't purely hard rock and metal (and even their biggest hits had influence from other genres: "Changes", anyone?). Take doom metal, for example: it's mostly people trying to be Black Sabbath. How many have really captured that sound perfectly? Not a lot of people, as they miss the underlying subtleties Black Sabbath had to their music and, in their efforts to be doom metal, they accidentally cut out the inner blues subtleties that make Sabbath so iconic. I could go on, but I think most people are wondering where the review is and why I'm ranting about all of this, so I'll get off of my soapbox and get on with the actual review.
*Rant alert deactivated. You may now breathe a sigh of relief, if you wish, and I apologise for going so far off topic!*
Now, I'm not going to say that just playing a style of music you like is a bad thing. Heck, I like hard rock as much as the next guy and I'd love to be in a hard rock if I was given the opportunity. It's just that, as I mentioned in my rant, it's harder to write deeper music if you don't do your research into the influences of the genre and take notes, as a lot of inner subtleties can be found in the music of the big bands of the 70's and 80's if you look closely. And that's the thing that I think New Device have to do before they do their next album, as it'll help them to step up their game significantly. HOWEVER, putting my rant aside (and not a moment too soon...), what they present to us on their second album is still very strong in and of itself and, if you just want to enjoy the music and expect to get a good album at the least, you'll not go wrong picking up this album.
If you've listened to any modern hard rock albums over the past few years and heard any post-grunge, you probably know what to expect here: riffs powerful enough to get you excited about just rocking out, vocals that focus on having a lot of power (at the expense of some subtlety, but New Device do at least have their moments of it) and ballads that will be heavily in love or hate it territory, depending on how much you like ballads in general. Nothing really wrong with all of that, but it does mean that, if the band doesn't have strong hooks, it can blend together and leave you bored. While it does blend together a bit, New Device do manage to avoid falling into this pitfall enough that you do at least have some highlights from the album and you don't feeling like you're stretching to find them: these are highlights that would still be highlights on a better album, they aren't the best of a bad bunch!
The songs that stand out to me as highlights are the title track, which has a pretty cool riff, a strong chorus and gets the album off to a very good start, "New York", which is a very enjoyable ballad that I think works very well, "Another Life", which has a nice chorus and is another really nice ballad overall, "Feel The Wrath", which has a really cool chorus that will have you singing along very quickly, and "Save Your Life", which has a strong sing along chorus and a really neat riff. None of the other songs are necessarily bad, but I find that these are the songs I return to the most from the album. Instrumentally, all of the guys are at least competent musicians, but I have to say that Daniel Leigh's vocals will wind you up the wrong way if you don't like post-grunge.
On a production level, I think this might JUST be outside of what I'd consider acceptable mastering. While it does have a powerful sound to it and it works for this album, I think it might be a bit too loud overall. While post-grunge and hard rock are generally genres which do demand a loud sound, there's a line between "a powerful master" and "ear fatigue inducing" that a lot of producers involved in the loudness war seem to not be aware of and I think this is just stepping over the line into the latter. Thankfully, it's not to the level where I would consider it unlistenable, so less picky people will not have the same complaints that I do with it. The mixing is very solid, although I think the bass could have done with maybe being turned up a bit (and no, I will not stop making this complaint until producers take a hint!).
Overall, I'd say the album is a very good album that, if you don't have the same complaints I mentioned in my rant, will be worth a listen. It probably won't blow you away, but there's enough good stuff on the album to at least keep you interested in it for a bit.
Final score: 7 out of 10
Personal favourites: "Here We Stand", "New York", "Save Your Life"
(...Oh yeah, and the album I'm waiting for in the post? Well, let's just say that building a city on rock and roll won't mean anything if you don't repair it for a good while!)
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