Reviewed by Steve Best

Don't know much about this hard rocking lot from Alabama, but by the sound of this demo, they recorded themselves live, or at least, very badly. It pains me to say it, but the songwriting is formulaic, as are the lyrics, while the vocals are rendered almost inaudible by a combination of treatment effects and a poor mix, which is far too guitar heavy. On the plus side "Distorted Bass 101" contains some nifty bass work from Jim Bearden in what is an interesting instrumental. May I offer the following advice to the band; work on ensemble playing (timing is a little frayed at the edges), work on achieving light and shade, which you can do even in hard music, make sure you edit your songs (nearly all the tracks have silence or ambient noise at the start - the final song "Slapshop" has 13 seconds of ambient silence which just isn't good enough). My final piece of advice is when you've done all of the above, THEN put it onto CD. This is just very poor.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

Interested in reviewing music? Find out more here.