Song, by Toad

This is a tricky one to write, because I don’t write negative reviews of new bands, but this may end up seeming a lot like it.

Basically, I don’t particularly love this EP, but I am writing about it because there are loads of things happening here which I do like.  Also, it’s available as a free download from Common Cloud Records, so you can try it, have a listen, and see if you see what I’m getting at.  You might love it anyway.

Basically, I don’t have especially specific criticisms of the album; there’s nothing I can quite point to and suggest the band improve, because they are basically doing the right things.  A couple of the songs are terrific, but with this kind of grumbling, slightly threatening music I think you need to grab the listener by the innards pretty immediately, and at times that fails to quite happen for me.  I love the sound: the distant vocals, the slow, ominous bass, the mournful strings, but on occasion the emotional  grasp doesn’t quite take hold.

When it does, however, on songs such as opener ‘Though Super-violent, We Chewed With Our Mouths Shut’ and ‘We Would Need a Place to Hide, Wouldn’t We? Men Who’d Seen Miracles Did’, preposterous titles aside, the effect is really superb.  It can feel something like a carefree skip through a deserted mental asylum.

So for all I don’t entirely click with this record, I hear a band here who I think I definitely have the potential to click with, and who I’ll be keen to hear in future, just to see where they take all this.

Prussia – We Would Need a Place to Hide, Wouldn’t We? Men Who’d Seen Miracles Did

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Prussia on MySpace