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| Masterplan For Failure - demo |
Four-piece chilled out Indie band with a dark edge. They asked me for a review months ago, and haven't moaned once that I haven't done it - so definitely chilled out then?
1 ? Second On The Left
2 - September
Before I say anything, I'm going to show you a quote from the band?s website:
"These songs were recorded one Sunday afternoon in roughly one take per instrument..."
Well it shows. Generally not in that bad a way, but you can?' help but feel that with a bit more time these songs could have sounded a lot better. The instruments sound good, though there?s enough reverb on the snare to make worry an 80's Hair Metal band, and the floor tom boomed a bit in my headphones. I really liked the clean guitar sound actually; it's shimmery but still warm. The guitars are swamped in delay and other effects, but they're pleasant and actually add to the sound, (even the when the Whammy pedal comes in!). The guitar on the right struggles on a couple of high notes; I?m guessing the intonation is a bit out. The instruments are well separated too, which given the nature of the recording was a surprise, and everything is clear, so it sounds a tiny bit like it's playing through an old gramophone or something. The whole thing sounds a little odd, like it's had the high and low end cut. I was slightly concerned for my hearing at first - both tracks are skewed slightly to the left, an effect made more powerful by the fact that the vocals are very obviously panned to the left.
There were two main issues I had with the tracks. Firstly, the drum rhythms: -September- has a hi-hat shuffle going on which just doesn?t feel right to my ears, and when the drums come in proper on -Second On The Left- they just seem to upbeat for the song. Still, the fact they're unexpected doesn't make them bad as such; they just aren't to my taste. The second problem (and the bigger of the two) is the vocals. Other than being oddly off-centre, they're also really out of tune. Mostly it?s a case of being a bit flat, but there are some points where I have no idea what melody the singer is actually going for. His voice is actually very smooth and suitably brooding - sounding quite like Jonah Matranga (One Line Drawing/ex-Far) in his lower register (think the first verse of -Um?-) ? but its tuneless-ness makes it difficult to listen to the songs.
Musically, this is a promising demo, especially when you consider how it was recorded. There aren't many bands that make Indie with this kind of gloom to it, and this lot do it quite nicely. There are a few bum notes on the guitar, but other than that it's pretty tight too. Given more time in the studio, I think they could record some good music - but they need to sort out the vocals to really make an impact.
Submitted by Poison_Pen
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Posted on Saturday, March 11 @ 13:07:57 EST
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Average Score: 3.5
Votes: 2
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Re: Masterplan For Failure ? demo (Score: 1)
by failure-by-design on Sunday, March 12 @ 14:00:35 EST
(User Info | Send a Message) | Cheers for the review, I agree with nearly all of it and there are alot of things that needed changing, this has come up when we have been rerecording them properly and they have a better feel to them, the vocals were very limited with them being in someones house and that has been overcome.
Anyways, thank you for the review and hopefully our next effort will get better results! |
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