COMMUNICATING COMMUNIC TO THE [NOT QUITE] POWER METAL FAITHFUL

Yesterday’s commentary on the disappointing new Raintime single had two positive effects. 1) Everyone’s favorite negative nancy Ziltoid actually agreed with me on something, not just that the new single is weak but that 2008’s Flies & Lies was a good album [just watch, he’ll come back now and say something else], 2) Some modern power metal fans came out of the closet to share new bands with us, amongst them Suckalo Andy Synn to tell us about Communic.

Mr. Synn also made a good point, namely that bands like Mercenary, Firewind, Raintime and Communic aren’t really power metal. As he put it so succinctly, “No frilly shirts, no lyrics about orcs/elves/woods/battles, just big riffs and big vocals.” True enough. But I guess that if radio programmers today are calling MGMT and Vampire Weekend modern “alternative” then we can call the aforementioned bands modern power metal by the same extension.

So, Communic are pretty fucking rad. The songs on Communic’s MySpace page are exactly what I’d want from any of these bands… just big riffs and big vocals. And the cheese factor is definitely there, but that’s why we like it.

-VN