Avalanche - Excessive

Hear The Track Here

Although my own musical sphere is usually more esoteric than most musicians, my abiding and eternal fascination has been for the Devils Own Music - rock. I cut my musical teeth on this genre over thirty years ago and I still look forward to a good head banging session wiv me mates over at Mike K's Saturday Night Rocks show on Songplanet. Like me, Mike K is also a consummate rock animal, mixing the roughest of blues with Texas hardcore, and out and out heavy metal as if they were designed to be slammed together in the roughest of fashions. Both of the tracks I am starting off this month came from my exposure to them on this most listenable of internet radio shows and both feature artists I have review before: Christopher Martin Hansen and Avalanche.

I don't know for the life of me why Avalanche are not on Soundclick, but either of the two sites I mention above should get you to their output. Excessive is a brand new, hot off the press recording and it blew me away when Mike played it on SNR, and I automatically singled it out for a review on the strength of that one listen. See not only have I been schooled in this genre since it first came to light, I've also been a record producer/engineer working solely with this type of material so it covered two of my favourite passions - high octane rock performance and classic rock production techniques. Both of which are on on display in this excellent track, giving us the smallest glimpse of just how electric this band could be live.

A further bonus has to be the quality of frontman Mike Foster's leads, his class vocals and - more than anything else - his songwriting ability. There's a sense of the classic about this track in a great many ways and I am (stupidly enough) reminded in both performance AND sound of the wildman himself, Mr Ted Nugent. I was lucky/unlucky enough (depending on one's level of deafness) to work on a couple of tours with the ol' hunter himself and there is a lot about this track that reminds me of his work. It's powerful, energetic and classy enough to stand out in any rock crowd - particularly lyrically. The lyrics were written way back in 1985 but you wouldn't think that on first hearing them, they are as relevant now (more so maybe) as they no doubt were then. Since their incredible debut as live performers on Mike's SNR, Avalanche have supplied me with lots of great rock experiences, but none that will better this.

MUST HAVE rock.