READER’S CHOICE: YEP. F*CKIN’ PEORIA.
Alright. So all of yesterday’s entries from Vegas pretty much blew goats, and not only did the Peoria-area reader known as “chainchomp” leave a comment reassuring me that I was being punished, but he also admitted that not every band listed in his e-mail recommendation was good — but they all “get alot of hype here in good ol’ Pee-Town.” So today I’m rewarding his kindness and honestly but taking a stroll down to this so-called “Pee-Town.”
If I ever live somewhere named after urine, please end me.
Anyways, we’re off to the races. Yay.
This is a really super-generic deathcore band. Apparently the singer used to be in With Dead Hands Rising, so that should shock no one. They do occasionally come up with something cool — I like the epic, Dimmu-core section of “Spilling Flesh” that stars around the 1:54 mark, for example — but for the most part, the world could live without this band. An inauspicious start for Peoria.
The first thing I see when I go to their MySpace page are suits and a neck tattoo, so right off the bat, I’m super excited to hear their music. They basically sound like Hatebreed, if Hatebreed were heavily influenced by Korn riffs instead of Slayer riffs, and then the clean-sung chorus kicks in (complete with background “Oooooooohhhh”s) and the guy I wanna target ain’t the messenger.
I can’t believe that chainchomp included Minsk, and I can’t believe that they weren’t at the top of the list. Admittedly, we don’t write about Minsk enough around here. But, yeah, Minsk are terrific, and you should be familiar with them. I always thought Minsk were from Chicago, ’cause Sanford Parker is in the band. But I stand corrected. Anyway, definitely check out Minsk if you haven’t before.
Well I certainly like the name of the band. And, oh hey there!, the music doesn’t suck! IT’S A FUCKING MIRACLE!!! It’s basically stoner/beardo stuff, but I’ll that over Kornbreed any day. Some of it’s really melancholy and introspective and some of it is really rockin’ and fat-sounding, but it’s all good. I can’t even imagine how this band fits into the scene with Czar. Have they ever done a gig together? That would be like Oceano touring with Howl. It would make less than no sense.
On a not-really-related note, check out Cloudkicker, too. It’s a one man semi-djent instrumental act. Another awesome recommendation from Empyreon/Meek is Murder drummer Frank Godla. They’re not from Peoria, but they do have the word “cloud” in their name.
The Cygnus Loop is apparently a “supernova remnant,” which makes me think it would be a more appropriate name for Lukas Rossi’s next band. But Lukas Rossi is not in this band, who play what I think could only be described as blackened sci-fi death: they’re lots of gloopy, It Came from Planet X-style synths, and some samples of what I think is the sound the robots in Transformers make when they, y’know, transform — but the music is basically black metal. That sounds kinda cool in theory, but the execution is week. The riffs aren’t memorable, and the synths sound cheap and cheesy, and really stick out like a sore thumb amongst all the Behemothing and Misery Indexing (and those Transformer sounds are llllaaaaammmme). I appreciate that they’re trying to do something a little different, but they need to figure out a way to do it, uh, better.
You should never have the word “scene” in your band name. It makes it way too easy to make fun of you. Especially if you’re a scene band. Like this group is.
This band’s name is false advertising. But if you like Trapt and Breaking Benjamin, well, boy oh boy do I have a band for you!
One of the songs, “The Last of the Pagan Kings,” is like pagan metal with punk vocals in addition to black metal howling. Weird! The rest of it is pretty standard stuff for the genre. It’s not really for me, but it’s definitely not the worst thing on this list.
It would seem that you write this band’s moniker thusly: “threeAMproject.” Okay. And, sure enough, the first song, “Killborn,” starts out real sleepy-like. It sounds kinda like slow Alice in Chains, only, mercifully, the singer isn’t pulling a Sully Erna and trying to sound like Layne Staley. Then all of a sudden they turn into a really heavy djent band. Huh. I did not see that coming. I don’t think this is the very best the genre has to offer, but it’s not bad. Besides Minsk and Cloud Burial, this is the only band on the list that I think really deserves any consideration. It’s not hard to imagine that this band could be on Sumerian sometime in the near future.
And that’s it for Peoria.
Soooo… anyone know of any good metal bands from Urbandale?
-AR
