Death Castle – Crash Landing
Were the early years of rock n’ roll really part of much more innocent times? After all, here were musicians writing dance tunes for a world comprised of people that had just spent years trying to kill each in the deadliest conflict the world had ever seen.
Were musicians really that much more honest about their art? Not if you’re going by some of the autobiographies they’ve written at a safe distance from the fact. Violence, underage sex, drug intake are all part of the stories of some of the greatest legends in American early rock n’ roll.
Death Castle’s Crash Landing with its gallows humour dares play around with the idea of expectation and reality. It’s DYI, psych-rock made intelligently and with plenty of power. It is a brilliant kind of psychodrama, helping you dream of the worst, so as to avoid actually living it.
Finn – Dead or Alive
There’s plenty of drama involved in any regular person’s life. From the outside looking in, however, many of these stories seem devoid of the heroics that characterize a great Hollywood production. The truth is that most people get hit and never get back up. Life just provides that big of a punch.
The old Westerns may appear as simple escapism to some. However, isn’t any story of heroes and villains like that? And, how are we supposed to learn anything if not by mimicking others? The truth is that life becomes what you are most convinced it is.
For Finn, life’s a gun-blazing showdown, and no better medium for expressing this exists other than the old, gloomy, muscular blues-rock. This is, however, a tune that digs into the past with an eye on present-day glories. Its nimble verses and shiny production make it an ideal song to be presented on the radio. As someone tickled pink about more guitar music being played on the airwaves, I admit to being pleased.
