Fantasy rock: BURSTING WONDERLAND and Velvet reviewed

Velvet – Black and Blue

Velvet sounds like a rock group who has had the good fortune of being influenced by modern indie’s taste for dramatic poetry. Black and Blue, after all, begins with a recitation about heartbreak over clean-cut and sparse guitar chords. 

While the vocals remain the focal point throughout the tune, the entire band gets a shot at glory at around the 1-minute mark when the song moves into the indie-goth territory. The sound of the bass guitar is highly prevalent, the guitars play icy, choppy chords, while the group’s singer acts his way through the rest of the story concerning affairs of the heart and the inevitable downfall. 

Velvet make an impression asf highly-dedicated young men. Black and blue shows a lot of potential. Sure, at times the grandeur of their ideas doesn’t wholly match the execution, but there’s big, quality dreaming here, and it could get them far, very quickly.

BURSTING WONDERLAND – IN MEMORY OF

I am weary of bands that write their name in all caps, just as I am of people that type their messages that way. That strategy of communication does, however, not quite reveal what BURSTING WONDERLAND is looking to do on IN MEMORY OF. Quite the opposite. 

The success of historic television dramas and the soundtracks that accompanied their opening credits has created an interesting new niche. Most often, the songs that these productions choose are moody, slow, and fit in easily with the heroic, dramatic narrative that they are accompanying. 

This is that type of song. It’s the sort of tune that works best accompanied by visual assistance, or, alternatively, when making a concentrated effort to imagine a great battle about ready to come to its conclusion, or its true consequences just starting to be felt. Guitars shimmer throughout as the Celtic melodies tell the tale of murder, betrayal, and grief.