Robyn Writes

Review: Moral Dilemma – Is Anyone Alive Out There?

Launched on the increasingly popular PledgeMusic, Moral Dilemma’s third and final album Is Anyone Alive Out There? can probably lay claim to being the most punk album of 2014. Funded by the fans for the fans, and having announced that they will play no final shows, this record is to be a send-off for a band who have given it everything for the past eight years. I’m going to be honest and say it straight off the bat – this is a perfect album. This is less a band riding off into the sunset after a shift well played and more a band scorching its way down to hell and taking absolutely everything else down with it.

Where previous Moral Dilemma efforts have been (and I mean this in the most flattering sense) kind of scrappy affairs with minimal production values and more or less paint-by-numbers hardcore punk, Is Anyone Alive Out There? showcases a band giving their legs one last glorious stretch. In terms of the step up these guys have made between albums; think the gap between Diesel and Power and Total 13 by Backyard Babies. Think Bleach to Nevermind. Think In Casino Out to Relationship of Command.

The album kicks off with a slow build up and a very metal guitar solo intro before giving way to the more familiar breakneck Moral Dilemma shtick. It’s an absolute thrill-ride, but this is merely the tip of a furious iceberg. Next up is album highlight ‘Lost Cause For Alarm’, which is the kind of tune Bad Religion would kill to come up with these days. It is full of impressive guitar fills and boasts an incredibly catchy chorus – exactly the sort of song that could launch a band right into the big time. With the two vocalists swapping lines, it’s almost like Johnny Foreigner high on petrol fumes.

It isn’t all gutter punk fury on Is Anyone Alive Out There? though, as the band have really diversified their sound. It’s almost like knowing this was their last roll of the dice, they decided to throw absolutely everything at it; kitchen sink and all. You get the rockabilly-skiffle-punk of ‘Spare The Vote, Spoil The Ballot’, you get Flamenco guitar tapping in ‘Evolution’, but perhaps the biggest surprise of all is in ‘Building Gallows’. This is another song with masses of crossover potential utilising a Hammond organ and a harmonica. It wouldn’t sound out of place on an album by their German gutter-punk counterparts Radio Dead Ones, or even – at a push – The Gaslight Anthem.

Put simply, there is not a bad song on Is Anyone Alive Out There? What Moral Dilemma are offering as their swansong is a relentless forty-minute sonic gut punch, and easily their best album by a considerable margin. This is an intensely vital listen and a wholly satisfying one at that. This is the kind of album that makes you fall in love with punk all over again.

5 out of 5 high fives!

Review: Wrongchilde – Gold Blooded

Mat Devine is taking a bit of a break from Kill Hannah to try something new. His solo project, dubbed Wrongchilde, took to PledgeMusic with some fairly outrageous packages for the truly devoted to raise the funds to produce a debut album. Devine’s managed to pull in some big names from the American alternative scene, like Gerard Way and Sierra Kusterbeck, and it’s fair to say that in some ways, Gold Blooded is a pretty ambitious record.

In other ways, it just sounds like a softer version of Kill Hannah. Fans of KH won’t be disappointed, but they won’t exactly be surprised either. While Kill Hannah have been consistently putting out big rock tunes since forever, a lot of slower, more considered tracks have been sneaking on to their latest records, despite a surge in popularity that would probably have suggested otherwise. But, it’s fair to say that Gold Blooded takes full advantage of the experience and sound that Devine’s been previously crafting and cranks it up to 11. Tracks like ‘Call Me Crash’ and title track ‘Gold Blooded’ probably wouldn’t sound out of place on a KH record, with sweeping and echoey guitars, big riffs and clever hooks.

However, there’s a huge influx of 80s influence, both good and bad. The huge synths and goth vibes on ‘Lace Up Your Boots’ are just perfect, and ‘Hopeless Beach’ sounds like it just stepped out of a John Hughes movie. Seriously. A fairly awful key change in ‘Dance to Your Heartbeat’ nearly threatens to unseat the record entirely, but Gerard Way’s appearance in ‘Falling in Love Will Kill You’ rescues it all from certain oblivion. If there’s any 80’s pop cliché you can name, Devine’s probably made it, but nine times out of ten, it’s far too good to bemoan. Instead, you’ll be jumping in the car and heading off on one of those coming-of-age roadtrips… even when you’re 20-something.

Lyrically, Devine’s still as abstract as ever, but his storytelling skills remain perfectly intact. There are many tales of heartbreak, though none as eloquent as ‘Frostbite Year’, and lead single ‘Falling In Love Will Kill You’ goes in hard and fast with the metaphor, offset just perfectly by a gentle acoustic backing. For the most part, it’s all pretty beautiful.

Whether you’re a Kill Hannah fan or not, it’s going to be impossible to ignore Wrongchilde. Devine’s first pop album is absolutely stunning – the perfect soundtrack to summer.

4 out of 5 high fives!

Review: Bear VS Rhino – Vulture Song [EP]

Back in my teens, my best friend and I embarked on a short-lived and ill-advised music project that went by the name of Mr. Law. We didn’t really give melody or structure any time of day; the idea was to just play dissonantly and hit jam jars a bit. It wasn’t experimental, it wasn’t avant-garde and it certainly wasn’t art. We were just being weird because we wanted to. I get very much the same vibe from Bear VS Rhino.

On their new EP Vulture Song, London’s Bear VS Rhino document their first year and a half as band, and it sounds like three lads in a garage having a hell of a time making a racket. One of life’s simple pleasures.

The collection kicks off with ‘Beck Up, Back Up’ which opens with a grinding sludge riff before darting all over the musical landscape. You get a drawling Mark E. Smith vocal style occasionally giving way to some Mike Patton-esque swirls of craziness. You get gloriously dissonant guitar work trading phrases with almost anthemic pop rock tones that you wouldn’t be surprised to hear on a Reuben album. There are next to no production values (it was recorded in a shipping container) so this is about as lo-fi as it comes, but there are plenty of ideas and plenty of potential on show. This is just the first song.

Elsewhere on the EP, you get the slinky Gang of Four post-punk bass line of ‘Milli80seconds:publicist’ (not a typo) which underpins a slow, brooding piece of music with a schizophrenic exploding attack added in sporadically for good measure. You get the The-Fall-plays-jazz stylings of the brilliantly (or oddly) titled ‘A Letter To My Brother And Sister, Fuck Him, He Doesn’t Know What Paracetemol Is’. You also get the frenetic, more conventional punk attack of ‘If It Looks Dead and If It Smells Dead, It’s Probably Fucking Dead’. Variety is clearly the order of the day for Bear VS Rhino.

This is unquestionably a band playing for an incredibly narrow niche. There is potential here and you get the feeling that they could do something more conventional and with a much wider appeal if only they wanted to. That they don’t want to is a credit to them, and fair play. No matter what you think of the noise Bear VS Rhino make, they sound like they’re having an absolute whale of a time making it.

3 out of 5 high fives!

Review: Speaking in Shadows – The Lies We Lead [EP]

A big welcome this week to Speaking in Shadows, formed back in 2010 in the depths of the Midlands (Nuneaton, in fact). Now releasing their new EP, The Lies We Lead, SIS have bashed and crafted together a mix of pop-punk melodies, with prominent alternative rock tunes while skirting on the boundaries of post-hardcore.

To kick off the EP, SIS deliver ‘Splinters’, an addictive and straight-up rock melody with powerful drumming and jagged guitar lines. You get great melodies, a bouncing rhythm and a deep, dark bass. The chorus is especially radio-ready in the dynamic opener. It’s odd to notice the whiney vocals on this track, reminiscent of Ian Watkins (if we’re allowed to speak his name with regards to music these days), but they only seem to sound so nasally on ‘Splinters’. This isn’t really a criticism, unless you really dislike that sort of singing, it’s just peculiar that it’s much more noticeable on this particular track.

Second up, ‘Technicolour Trainwreck’ has a similar energy, and comes out swinging with riffs and rhythms planting down a firm intro. There is a definite swagger to it and more of a pop-rock attitude, which only adds to the commercial sound the band seem capable of crafting – making it definite radio material with an anthemic chorus. The guitar work is pretty nifty here, controlling the pace and power of the song, while getting as catchy as the riffs get on the EP.

Then we get to ‘Misled Soldiers’… In terms of the song’s structure, it varies away from its predecessors, being more progressive, slowly constructing each element at a time. The track builds up an aura of darkness and the vocals even reach moments of unbridled anger, crashing into metalcore growls. Unfortunately, it’s not all good. ‘Mislead Soldiers’, an anti-war song, is lyrically poor. In fact, it’s not just poor; at times, it becomes pretty tasteless. In its anti-war sentiment, it is far too obvious and the track loses any power the instruments build up. It’s a rant for the sake of being a rant. Not clever, targeted, humorous or really hard-hitting. It has the same political worth as BFMV’s Scream, Aim, Fire. You know exactly what I mean. It may do well with the jaded teens who still think that ‘the man’ is out to get them, if they’re not too busy listening to Black Veil Brides, but when bands keep prattling on about how “‘we’ won’t accept ‘your’ lies”, it just becomes tiresome.

‘Breaking Silence’ rescues us from the depths of ‘Misled Soldiers’ with abrasive guitar riffs and full force intensity, which subsides to allow Smith to unveil the greatly improved narrative. It is predictable at times, but still different to those that went before despite the mass voiced chorus and feverish energy. ‘Moths’ goes even further away from the rest of the EP with the standard once-in-an-EP slowed drown track. I’m not being disparaging though, I was actually pleasantly surprised by SIS’s acoustic delivery. Offering something that is yet again quite different from the rest of the release; it offers up more sensitivity until the abrupt drumming brings in an explosion of raw emotion. Bringing in the drums and riffs at the end works perfectly, helping to convey the sense of overflowing emotion, especially when it’s juxtaposed against the tender acoustics up until their introduction.

Finally title track ‘The Lies We Lead’ finishes off the EP, but I’m not entirely convinced I like the way it does it. It sounds as though the band were going for a feel-good, uplifting summer song, but it sounds misjudged, too obvious and far too cringey for me. At times the lyrics get more creepy than catchy “Take off your clothes and be who you wanna be tonight”, which is a disappointing end to a mixed but impressive collection of tracks. I say ‘collection’ because all six songs are clearly crafted to stand on their own, musically and lyrically, as if each was considered to be a single, quite the way EPs seem to be going at the moment. It gives us a good indication of what SIS are capable of, a great smattering of talent from all areas, but leaves me hoping that above all, they graft the tracks together with more well thought-out lyrics in the future. If an album release is around the corner, it will be interesting to see how the variety of sounds and obvious potential is blended into a consistent whole.

3 out of 5 high fives!

Notes from the Keybed – This Month in Synths: July 2014

Canadian dance-punkers Death From Above 1979 are back and sounding as vital as ever. It’s been ten years since the duo combined monumental fuzz rock riffs with danceable beats on 2004’s ‘You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine’, but their influence can still be heard in everyone from Bloc Party to DZ Deathrays. One of the biggest influences on my own music making I was beyond excited when the band announced that they would be touring and releasing new music this year. The result is ‘Trainwreck 1979’, taken from upcoming second album ‘The Physical World’, and it’s an absolute belter! Known for his huge bass tone that renders the need for a guitarist useless, it’s easy to forget that Jesse F Keeler also plays a mean synthesiser. His time making electro in MSTKRFT has clearly paid off as the new single is packed full of luscious string pads, twinkling arpeggios and a piano hook that lifts the chorus up. Matched by Sebastien Grainger’s trademark drawl and thundering drums it is clear that the two-piece are back to show the current crop how it’s done. The single is out now and the album is due in September.

A couple of months back we revealed how minds were blown by Emperor Yes at this year’s Great Escape in Brighton. It seems we weren’t the only ones wooed by the electro pop trio’s charms as the band have announced that they are now working with the fantastic Alcopop! Records to release their debut album later this year. First single ‘Paramesse to Tanis’ is a psychedelic tour-de-force of abstract lyrics about pulling mountains across Egypt accompanied by choppy synth chords, Phil Collins aping 80’s drum fills, and quirky sound effects. The vocoder backing vocals that dominated earlier releases have been replaced by floaty indie boy harmonies, but the change is welcomed by this listener at least as, contrary to popular belief, one can have too much robot voice. Definitely one to check out for fans of Friendly Fires and The Flaming Lips.

I want to end this month’s round up (don’t worry keytar fans, check the paragraph below) by introducing some of my favourite synth-based music from the local area. Michael D Wynn is a producer/musician from Worcester, who has been playing a variety of instruments in countless bands but is now focusing on electronic music. He was responsible for one of my favourite releases of this year back in January, combining contemporary pop hooks with analogue beats and Microkorg riffs ‘The Careerist / Pinks’ with Flossie-T on vocals is a must-hear. Check it out on Soundcloud and harass him to make more like this!

Another band from the Worcestershire area who have been making waves in the music scene are Shatter Effect. I first came across this group, who combine noughties indie rock with male/female vocal trades and catchy synth parts, a couple of years back and they’ve been going from strength to strength with each subsequent single release, always complemented with visually stunning videos. The band are currently in the studio recording new material and I’ve been constantly checking their social media for updates, as the results will undoubtedly be excellent.

Finally… Keytar Hero time! Here at TwoBeatsOff we like Boston (as in the city, not the soft rock band… okay, fine, both). it’s the home of hardcore troubadours Defeater as well as ace punk/emo label Run For Cover Records. Well, now we have another reason to love the Massachusetts capital as a Prince-loving anonymous man dressed as a bear has been spotted riffing out on a keytar, busking away whilst, in his own words, ‘killing racism’. Perfect. Keytar Bear, we may be 3000 miles away and we will probably never cross paths. But from behind a laptop in a middle-class haven of the Cotswolds, for services to keytardom and equality, we salute you.