Demos

Neverify - Species

Owain Paciuszko 28/10/2010

Rating: 2/5

There's a certain guilty pleasure to be had in opening track Union, which begins like a bizarre ballad before turning into electro-country with early-Kid Rock stylings, flying off into rock-metal asides and some moments that skirt a bit too close to the earnest posturing of Nickleback. Fortunately, for the most part it's a rather silly assault of crisp, angry riffs, splashy drumming, slap bass and pretty decent vocals from Dan Bignell.

Manumission is a faster number, revelling in squealing guitar licks as much as its predecessor, it's a throwback to early 90s rock-metal that would have made Bill & Ted cream themselves. This Berkshire quartet throw in a lot of unashamedly quirky flourishes into their production, with their kitchen-sink philosophy going into their performance on this record, which is energetic and polished. However, their relentless sound occasionally falls flat with Avatar a pretty standard track, chugging along lacking the inventiveness that they displayed on earlier songs, and closing track Voyeur feels cut from the same cloth in its heavier moments, but is more of a System of a Down-like mish-mash, Bignell's voice switching between a quiver and a guttural roar, his slips into falseto also fall a little flat not really gelling with the instrumentation.

There's an awkward balance on this EP, the first two tracks are pretty entertaining, but the next two flit between bland and brushing a bit too close to self-parody.