!Direction, Country!

Here’s another one I strongly disliked at first but has been finding a way into my zen’s (www.anythingbutipod.com) rotation..

Forward, Russia!


Fuck yeah.. I would label them (which I hate to do) "Hardcore Dance Punk"... First listen it kinda sounds like two leopards having angry breakup sex over a drummer having a rather rhythmic seizure. Seriously.. the lead singer has a kinda strange new-wave voice that can instantaneously degrade (upgrade?) to the sound of an angry jungle cat in the same measure. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post.. I am starting to like it.

It’s fucking interesting, if anything. I have yet to notice anything shocking about the band instrumentally other than the strange and relatively infrequent synth interludes (that should sound out of place but do not). Oh, except the percussion. It’s pretty awesome yet (for me) gets quickly overlooked when I am worrying about the lead singer’s head exploding..

Let me know what you think.. and I’ll leave you with this rather memorable quote from drownedinsound:

From the off, the four members of !Forward, Russia! rip against each other; Fractured and percussive guitar stabs are cradled by the most pounding rhythm section imaginable. It’s liquid dance in punk masquerade. They are the spiked ball on the end of a giant mace, but sharpened sharper than razors. The singer spazzes out relentlessly, hypnotically, voice never waning as he wails and hollers. A mega-quick banshee, a perfect frontman.

My sobriety is irrelevant, I’m fucked on music and stomping my feet.

An assortment of samples can be streamed/downloaded here: http://www.forwardrussia.com/music.htm

oh.. and i'm listening to the CD: "Give Me A Wall"

Gospel Alternative Rock - Been done?

That’s the cover of www.coldwarkids.com. Inside they have a pretty cool picture diary/blog of their current tour. It fits with my current view of this band: Pretty Cool. Thankfully, this is my evolved opinion. My initial listen of “Robbers & Cowards” led me to believe this is just a slightly more listenable version of Kings of Leon.

I was wrong.

Partially.. Take KoL and throw in a bit of Walkmen and something from the Mississippi Delta. What?

Yeah.. there is a pretty apparent Gospel sound throughout the album which I actually ended up really liking. There even is this one song (We Used to Vacation) that I swear sounds like whatever that 90’s song that started “I’ve been a baaad baaaaad girl”.. can’t remember what it was called…*

They seem to have a pretty standard post-alt rock setup… drum set, bass, piano and however many overdubbed guitars are necessary for the song… he’s got the voice of your classic rocker, not especially melodic or tuneful, but still pretty engaging.

Lyrically? They have gotten pretty good reviews around the interdumptruck for “deep-soulful-lyrics” but I don’t know how much I agree with that. Choruses are pretty catchy and ever now and again they make a surprising rhyme but I don’t see anything especially wonderful in them. Remember Jeff Buckley? Someone somewhere stated that their song “Passing the Hat” was channeling him. Meh.

My recommendations are “Saint John” and “Hang Me Up To Dry”…

You can download a bunch of MP3s from their EPs on the cold war kids website… I suggest you do.

In fact, pickup the disc.

I really like it. I wasn’t absolutely astounded by it, but it adds a nice dimension to my Zen’s Random Play all.


*I apologize for the disjointed style of this horrid post. I am hungover and tired and can’t seem to concentrate on something for more than a couple seconds.