Violent Soho: Self-titled

Finished exams today. Thank God. HA. The skin on my middle finger has worn through about 6 layers. Preeeetty cool.

Anyway, now it's down to business.

I'm going to dedicate this entire post to one of my FAVOURITE Australian bands, Violent Soho. They've recently released their second full-length Violent Soho.

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Violent Soho are an interesting collective. Their debut We Don't Belong Here rates as one of the best albums I heard last year, but disappointingly, this one doesn't reach the mark. Firstly, my main issue is with the recording. Violent Soho's attraction is the utter rawness of their art. The pounding riffs of the "original" tracks such as "Love is a Heavy Word" and "Jesus Stole My Girlfriend" is truly remarkable. It even challenges one to consider grunge as still having traces of life, behind the flannelets and binge drinking. When I downloaded my "copy" of this new endeavour, my hopes were crushed. Brutally.

The album is essentially a regurgitation of over half of its predecessor, 7 out of the 10 tracks are remastered. The production seems to have detracted from this raw nature Violent Soho can pride themselves on; it's kind of hard to articulate, but in short, the heavy drawn out bass-line that dominates the previous work is reduced to a cheesy overlay of a "do-do-do" and childish attempts at anthemic rock.

Here, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig8k9XZOOrQ

Can you hear the intensity? The "rawness" that I'm talkin' about? Eh?

Yeah, I thought so.

In short, I heard it and was immediately reminded of The Vines - Awesome debut, then crash and burn baby.

Make sure you ain't misunderstanding me, I'm not feeling this album due to the fact that they've lost their raw grunge spirit and haven't even bothered to write a new album. This album is more than likely to thrust them into popularity off the back of a year-long US tour. It's just got that kind of feel to it.