Demos

StealBackYourLife EP - StealBackYourLife

Matt Harrold 10/02/2007

Rating: 3/5

Stealbackyourlife are a three piece from Brighton who in their own words aim to “Provoke some ACTUAL energy”. No, not with thoughtful discussions about future sources of cheap, clean energy but the slightly less civilised medium of rock. Specifically a mixture of the more delicate, calculated rifting of Oceansize crunched into the more imaginative song structures used by yourcodenameis:milo whilst picking up a few rifts here and there from Hundred Reasons.

They've got the stop-start bass lines and drums down to a T on 'Event Metaphor' which changes tact so many times it'd give the Mars Volta a run for their money. Yes, it seems very much that bands are willing to pick up prog again in order to try and bring something new to the scene. 'Mono' starts up sounding as if Stealbackyourlife have been pilfering the Foo Fighters for a stuttering opening rift before building into something much, much heavier then Dave Grohl could manage. Its bass pounds in machine gun statico before scratchy guitars burst into full blown power chords. 'The Fight The Fall' is the shortest track at under two minutes in length and is about as radio friendly as it gets. All heart-felt bellows and shouting over beats threatening to palpitate.

So after all you'd think that there'd be a huge thumbs up right? Well. No. Not exactly, the problem being that whilst they're excellent musicians it doesn't mean they're rife with ideas. You'd be hard pushed to be able to tell 'Ruin' and 'Mary Got Stung,' the other tracks on the EP from those already mentioned before. So whilst there's promise here the band needs to work on diversifying their tracks a little.