Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Avalanche - Tell Us Where The Money Went

Hear The Track Here

I am a well known musical magpie. I flit from genre to genre in a light-headed daze, ogling each sparkly gewgaw as if it were the finest thing in the world. Meanwhile, a world away, master craftsman labour at their art, stamping their unique and individual sound on everything that they do. When I'm not magpie-ing, I can be found stuffing classic rock down my ears at a rate of knots and this is where said master craftsman separate the magpies from the men. I refer of course to that rock institution known as Avalanche who have come to almost own the classic rock genre on Soundclick, and many other sites with their faultless, nay fekkin flawless, take on the rock monster.

In case you've been living on some other planet, let me bring you up to speed. Avalanche are yer straight ahead classic rock band to their roots and - much more to the point - they know what made the genre so special back in the day. See my idea of classic rock songs is exactly that. Great songs, well performed with rock bollocks the size of skyscrapers and lyrics that say something besides ***** and *******. Classic songwriting has always been at the heart of what Avalanche do best, and - for me anyway - the good time-y feel and the especially timely lyrical content of Tell Us Where The Money Went sent this straight to my hard drive. Although we haven't agreed on every single Avalanche track they have released, when they hit it, they hit it good. Tell ya what, listen to the first thirty seconds of this and see if you can stop after that.

Being a 'proper' band, Avalanche are still restricted to the tried and true (and VERY expensive) recording studio method, which means a certain amount of restriction on what they can do. This track is from the latest series of sessions (in the middle of this year) and is a sure sign that Avalanche are still powering up. Seriously, if you love a good old headbang this is exactly what you need. I've played the gubbins out of the copy I had (this is very AC/DC in feel) and was delighted when Mike Foster threw a fully mastered version courtesy of David Pendragon into my inbox. To be sure, the new version is right up there but without the power, energy and intelligence behind the music - which is there in abundance - it would have been a nice mastering job. As it is, it's the final blue touchpaper to this little chunk of rock dynamite.

MUST HAVE Classic rock. We are not worthy.

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