Posted in: Rock by dean samways on December 10th, 2007 | 0 Comments
An EP review from UK unsigned band A word like.Attack.
Anything “post-” in genre is notoriously hard to put into a box. At The Drive-In were post-punk rock but they cradled so many other influences in their Tardis like musical container and the same goes for
A word like.Attack. Hailing from the south-coast, this, their second dabble in recording, would appear to be the benchmark for any unsigned act looking to make that first great piece of recorded music.
The opener, ‘The Last Man In Europe’, sounds like Linkin Park. An easy statement to make but it boasts one outstanding attribute of this release; it’s production qualities. For only a second attempt at recording this collection of tracks is immaculate and the first immediately raises the bar for anything that follows it.
‘Woman Need Not Be Afraid Of Man-Eating Sharks’, a mouthful indeed, is a Goliath journey through hardcore cityscapes and dormant volcanic ambiance. Piano parts splash punk drums, before guitar riffs cut into it all, bringing the whole song up a gear. Only this doesn’t sound like one track. Its poles are as distance as slow Mogwai and fast Symposium, but this doesn’t mean it’s incomplete. Some of the best live moments come when a crowd is taken down to meditative calms and dragged back up through plains of pleasure before being smacked in the face with bars of rapture; exactly what is done here.
The title track is the highlight. Taking from their Explosions In The Sky influences, the tempo is brought down to a “close your eyes and swing your body like you”re dancing to Sigur Ros’ level. Like Radiohead experimenting and settling on an electro design, this is a style Attack should build on.
‘We Searched The City, And Found Only Dust’, the final song, is a far cry from the interlude that went before it. The vocals, as you may expect, are pained, verge on screamy, but thankfully actually don’t go there.
The final track might put a familiar veneer on a familiar genre but the surprises come from the unfamiliar. The fusing of electro-orchestral music with a genus that maybe nearing saturation point is a masterstroke. The creativity involved shines through in like the EP does stands out from the other music pushing for space in that little box labeled “post-”.
