Sonic Bliss
Metamorphosis
4.4
How far have I traveled from my hard rock roots, I ask myself sometimes. I still recall the feeling of listening to Van Halen's first record the first time. I remember air guitaring to Kiss and Queen. I even remember getting a thrill the fist time I heard REO Speedwagon's "Back on the Road Again" - a really good song by a really bad act. But you grow, you know. Or regress. Whatever. Change. So when a band comes creeping along in 2006 and tries to sneak, spider like, bad buttrock with a few nods to post Metallica/post grunge past me, I have to bring the dictionary down on the little fucker before it gets to you, the reader, and bites your calf and it gets infected with 1983 spandex retrovirus and you have to get large chunks of flesh removed and skin grafts and cancer. And Sonic Bliss, brothers, you are that spider and this is my book.
The album starts off relatively well, with a couple of flatout rockers that, though almost heroically derivitave, at least show the band's strengths: Powerful vocals and some good musicianship. But very shortly the band deviates into its powerballad/Survivor/REAL ROCK RADIO HITS nonsense and the whole thing quickly becomes an embarrassment to everything hard rock is supposed to be about. Suddenly the vocalist sounds not so much powerful as off key and lost. And the musicianship which made the first couple of tunes jump and crackle now just meanders around feckless compositions, trying to find a method of retaining their usefulness.
And that is how the rest of the record goes. Except even the harder tunes start losing their bite. By the end the listener is in the forest of cringe, wishing to fuck for a BIG axe. Biting everyone from Kiss - circa UNMASKED... - to post some strange and unholy union of Firehouse and Godsmack, this band just has no business releasing this stuff to a modern metal public. And if the songs themselves are not grating enough, the production is so annoyingly weak you WISH they could sound as good as Survivor.
Bottom line is that this is one of the many records we get in here that makes me feel my age, makes me second guess my position as a reviewer or makes me wish I cherry picked my reviews. You, the metal reader, have nothing to gain from this record. Sonic Bliss, for your part, you have a good band, but you have to stop playing crap "original" versions of washed up song styles. Stick to the hard stuff, avoid the powerballads like you do anything contemporary and you could make some good music, I think. You have all the elements, band wise. But you just can't expect a heavy metal audience to take your 1985 basement kegger party bullshit seriously. Perhaps you should take a look at your album title and give it a bash.
