SMOKE (Smoke Follows Beauty) CD
Fuzz rock...and there's no end in sight! This time it's the LA based trio SMOKE, that presents us their personal interpretation of the 70's. The band has been playing around the LA club scene for the past three years, they've released a CD-EP ("Cobra"9 at the end of 2000 and the members of the band have played in another band before. This album was recorded with two different drummer, but now they've found a stable line-up.Ok, let's lose some words about the music.The album contains nine tracks and I'm glad to hear that they don't want to sound as the next Fu Manchu rip-off. After this disc has taken a lot of spins in my player, I must admit that I've got a few problems with SMOKE.
Ok, there are some good and inspiring songs on this album, especially when they are coming very close to the mid 90's Monster Magnet sound as in "Mina's Song" or "Hallucination" f.e., but there are also enough songs like "Devil Down", who are too average for my taste. And when I read that SMOKE want to grab the rock world by its balls, than I have to notice that they won't do it with this album. Another problem for me are the vocals of guitarist Marc Star, that are sounding too weak for this kind of music, but gladly there are enough instrumental tracks here.Maybe SMOKE are a killer live-act, don't know, but for me this debut won't stick out of the masses of today's releases.It's not a really worse album, just not my taste so decide for yourself. The album was released on the small label Kozmik Records and for more infos check out the SMOKE homepage.
(KK)