Shores

Excellent garage BM packs in strong melodies and rhythms, a robust and deep bassy sound and very clear yet darkly sparkling guitars in about 37 minutes but what stands out most is the nasal monotone singing that's a bit out of tune with the music and sort of resembles the voice of Homer Simpson from the cartoon series and, in tracks like "You Are Just Mirrors" and "Wheel of Ahriman", even channels Joey Ramone. The whole recording is very like some long-forgotten underground punk rock classic from the 1970s and songs like "Reading Unwritten Books" (sic) could have come from an early Joy Division demo or one by that band's contemporaries; indeed the duo includes an energetic and hard-hitting rendition of the old Joy Division classic "She's Lost Control" where for once the vocalist's odd and unemotional half-singing / half-speaking style agrees with the fast music (of course, remembering the original version which has a similar match between Ian Curtis's partly spoken style and the more delicate and spare music helps in the comparison). A couple of tracks, "Timbre Noir pt 2" which is an all-instrumental soundscape of raining distorted guitar drone and "Invocation" featuring a slightly muddier ambience of evil and some growling vokills, are as close as the band gets to recognisable black metal.

Overall the spirit and enthusiasm of raw garage rock'n'roll brim throughout the album particularly in songs like "Wheel of Ahriman" and "The Cloak" despite the strange singing which gives the music a distinctive style and charm. I'm prepared to stick my neck out and declare this recording will be a cult classic in years to come: fairly tight musicianship (but not too much so), muscular melodies and rhythms, an idiosyncratic style all the band's own and a dark and cavernous feel ensure this album ROCKS!!!