Friendship Commanders – MELT
There are plenty of tricks that rock bands can pull out of their bags. There are plenty of ways to entertain an audience. Some don’t even involve actually playing music. There are those who can merely rely on having their drums spin in the air or on lighting the bass player on fire.
That’s all fine and good. But, if you need to narrow things down, the entire history of rock n’ roll has all been about getting a small group of musicians to create a big enough sound so that a large group of people could hear it. The smaller the group of musicians and the larger the sounds, the more impressive it all is.
The other vital component is, of course, the emotional content. Bands that are able to pack their songs with enough of it are the ones that get audiences coming back and wanting to play the songs at various important times during their lives.
Thankfully, Friendship Commanders deal in fervour and in colossal rock sounds of the stoner and grunge varieties. Just two people creating all that noise? Just one band bringing so much heartfelt emotion into their songs? Yes, and nothing useless besides that. On “MELT,” Friendship Commanders prove that they’ve remained the one-stop solution for everyone looking for real soul from their hard-rocking kicks.
Say Hello To Heaven – Spirit of the Dog
You need rest, leisure, and peace if you’re concerned with the development of a family or a nation. But neither of these things will do you any good if, selfishly, you are trying to create great art. That’s because, as most know, the truly terrific artists make themselves work in dangerous conditions. They try to uncover the things that are most difficult about their existence and draw a fire under it.
And how does it all play out for the artists who take all these chances? Say Hello To Heaven’s musicians must be asking themselves the same thing. Don’t be confused by the BBC reports about rich writers spending time in their Summer home. Most artists, now and throughout history, face more than disillusionment. They face threats, ridicule and even jail time. This is not a profession, but rather a vocation and one that may force you to suffer as much as some apostle and for just as few fish sandwiches.
As the title would suggest, to fans of expressive 90s alt-rock. Say Hello To Heaven’s “Spirit of the Dog” is in no small part inspired by the works of Chris Cornell and his Seattle comrades. This is heavy-duty, highly emotional music. And because the heaviness of it is transferred into things that matter a great deal for a lot of people, the band does its best to represent the modern torments of the world, the ongoing loss of freedoms and the overarching feeling of powerlessness. Is telling the truth its own reward? It might have to be, and the novice group, Say Hello To Heaven, is willing to take the risk.
