October 27, 2006
This is great. Francesca Chiara fulfils all my wildest fantasies about female rawk singers as well, a hot blonde goth chick descended from a Venetian noble family singing “VAMPIRES, I want to live like Vampiiiires”, who could resist? Add some basil and a wee drop of balsamic vinegar and this album will feed every rock-opera craving you’ve ever had.
Of course a certain level of brain-switching-off needs to be done as the cheese factor is high throughout. Ballsy, bold & daring; grandiose, gutsy & high-flown; mythological, noble and valourous — there are few synonyms of ‘Epic’ that wouldn’t fit here. This is a gothic rock opera done on a huge scale, sometimes even more over-the-top than Meatloaf. Goth metal rock concept albums aren’t exactly flavour of the month these days though. Shame really.
But if ever Emo wanted a lesson in how to write tragic romance then the grand scale here, especially of Fading Roses (“it’s our last day together”), has none of the self-pitying introspection the kids wallow in, this is balls-out stadium screaming about Tragedy. Where emo-teens induldge in little boys crying about skinned knees and broken hearts, this is a full-grown rock diva singing about REAL PAIN. Still just as ridiculous, but in a much more pleasing fashion for those willing to take the trip.
In fact the whole stadium production and referencing influences such as Iron Maiden, Vangelis & Marilyn Manson almost requires the use of exageratted hyperbole about vagueries rather than analysing the wide vocal dexterity shown throughout; the lovely chugging basslines most evident on My Soul; it would seem petty to highlight the chorus hooks in The Chuaffeur and the beautiful rain soundscape of Dark City. Let’s leave it as a Meatloaf-rivalling rock epic.
I’m a fan, but maybe I am just a little embarrased about it so forgive me.
“Thank you God, Thank you for the darkness”
Mydriasis is an excessive dilation of the pupil due to disease or drugs. Well give me the drugs or the disease rather than listening to another hardcore album. This Berkshire five-piece’s PR blurb manages to feature “visionary melodic hardcore”, “post hardcore with a brain” and “experimental rock with post hardcore sounds” to try and cover every base of what I prefer to label as “banal and unlistenable shite-hardcore”.
The same whiney vocals that mean Radiohead get’s right on my tits at times feature heavily. The clipped & shouty background vocals of cliche-hardcore run throughout the album, unwarranted numerous tempo changes in each song and dragging the tunes out for as long as humanly possibly are also staples. Unfortunately there’s a huge number of potential listeners for this and they’ll hate me. I won’t count that as a loss.
The lack of grabbing my attention means I’m not certain if the spoken word overlays on Shinrah were meant to be humourous or poilitical satire, fifteen minutes in and track three has lost my interest for the rest of the album. I may have wandered off and only paid half attention from there on. The Mannequins provided an inoffensive soundtrack for loading the washing machine until the vocals got excruciatingly screamy. Mirrors and Magnets suited washing the dishes quite well with it’s pots & pans beats. The rest of the album carried me nicely through taking the bin out and doing the hoovering.
There are moments of good sprinkled throughout ‘In Order Of Appearance’ but they are sparse, the almost industrial sections of The Mannequins, the violin intro to Orb, but each time things start to drag on—although perseverance reveals a nice piano outro to Forced To Relate, masquerading under it’s own title of Inner City Fields— long after any interest has gone and the hardcore roots start to show as the mood is ripped apart time and again—maybe that’s the purpose of hardcore music and I just don’t get. I’ve already heard so, so many, completely similar sounding bands to mydriasis the boredom is turning to rage, I pray for the day the genre finally collapses under it’s own weight of repetative self-referencing cliche crapness.
On the plus side the cover art features an etch-a-sketch.
October 25, 2006
A written review demands more than simply linking to articles on the inadequecies of genre labelling systems and music-journos’ trait of inventing new words to describe certain bands that are tricky to identify in short snappy one-liner sentences. The Zox make this awkward by covering a very broad range of noticible influences and styles throughout ‘The Wait’, jumping seemlessly from one genre to another completely unrelated while building a sense of fit where such changes work perfectly naturally.
Thirsty starts us off with a bouncy pop rock riff with ska beats that occasionally run away to induldge in guitar-geek classical solo-ing. Carolyn then jumps into emo hardcore mellowness and radio friendly vocals. A Little More Time then slides us back to a reggae rhythm with teen punk vocals leading you gently through the song before Anything But Fine’s violin intro turns into a beautiful balladeering time out before the album’s darkest moment with Better If It’s Worse.
From there we’re given glimpses into almost stadium sized guitars during Bridge Burning unfortunately making things a little too epic for the next few tracks and slowing the record’s pace down away from my three-minute attention span. Luckily the quirkiness of Satellite and gypsy-folkish & classical violins throughtout Fallen regain interest before the more succesful anthemic & stadium sized rock finish of I Am Only Waiting.
Zox’s ‘The Wait’ is a fairly cool cult alternative indie album you can turn up and listen to but leave your parents saying “oh, they sound quite nice” — everything ticks over in a thoroughly unoffensive & decent manner that I fear will grow and grow on me each listen until I’m wondering why I wasn’t raving like a lunatic about the album as I type here.
Heavily referencing Sigur Ros in everything they do, Oxford’s Fell City Girl are currently finishing off a tour of England in support of ‘February Snow’. Based on this offering it’s probably a shame they never made it to Scotland as well as I’m sure they’d have picked up a few extra fans to make it worth their while.
A tender alt-rock melody with carefully restrained vocals from Phil Mcminn, February Snow wants to break out and be a crashing rock tune but the band manage to keep a hold on it each time the crescendo starts to build providing a great sense of yearning and striving to reach. It’s already snuck into my recent favourites playlist for those more reflective chill out moments.
There Are Heart Attacks compliments well by providing a live favourite where the energy is let loose just enough for a glimpse at what gig performances may be like but still just chilled enough to not conflict with the lead track.
