Band:
Davy Vain – vocals, guitars
Jamie Scott – guitars
Ashley Mitchell - bass
Tommy Rickard - drums
Danny West – guitars
Discography:
No Respect (1989)
All Those Strangers (1991)
Move on It (1993)
Fade (1995)
In from Out of Nowhere (2000)
On the Line (2005)
Guests:
Louie Senor – drums
Fraser Lunney - bass
Info
Released 28/10-2011
Reviewed 22/10-2011
Links:
davyvain.com
myspace
music buy mail
I'm not going to argue with you about 'Enough Rope' having material of quality. The music I hear actually reminds me of a Onthophagus taurus (a dung bug) - you know those bugs that collect excrements into small balls but actually is quite beautiful with the colorful black shell. It's anything but clinically clean yet somehow still looking quite nice. The music in some sort of heavy-thrash metal combo where it's rocking and shocking and simple, with some sleaze rock tendencies without making it in to glam.Not really hard but quite heavy. Angry but not aggressive. Like a bat awaken by light when it sleeps - it goes around a bit and makes some noise but not really attacking.
I can't really describe myself as a Vain fan from before. In fact, except for the odd couple of songs I haven't even heard much from this band before I received this album. But when the band really gets everything right on this album I have to say that I feel I might have missed out on something. Stray Kitten is quite clearly the highlight of the album but Triple X, Enough Rope and The Distance of Love are a few of the other songs that really works on this album. There must be a reason, though, for the world not to have better knowledge about Vain and as with most bands not really reaching the very top the biggest issue with Vain is the range of the material. They just don't have enough good material on their previous albums and actually this shines through also on this album at times.
However… 'Enough Rope' is clearly the album that Davy and his brothers in arms have put most of their heart and soul and sweat in to. Looking to the time factor, this is the album that has taken them most years to record and finish since the album prior. Then there's the fact that this eleven track track album is the first in their career where there's the majority of songs are good! This is plain and simple music, but with small means they've managed to put something together that's far from suffering from this. I've heard so much more advanced bands make more repetitive and boring music that whats's on this album, despite the fact that's it's so simple. It's really inspiring - like they have one two-sided coin and manage to twist and turn it around so well that it actually looks like ten coins. I kind of see it precisely as a coin, filled with germs and all kind of bacterias but it's shiny and looks so nice that you cannot really see it as that. I'm sitting here wondering how they've managed this charade and all I can come up with is that great things can come from even the most basic things. Not that I'm calling this album a "great" thing, despite it being good it's not really a candidate for album of the year or decade or something, but it is quality heavy metal in its most humble way, managing to get something really good out of it!
But getting to the core problem, we still have the range and variation problem in the output. There's six or perhaps seven songs on this album and the rest is nothing special at all. and there's the dilemma. This is the maximum of what you can get out of an album like this and when all is considered and weighted against each other and looked at with microscope my impression stays with that it's a good album… but not much more. What they've managed is to polish shit enough to glimmer… but all that glimmer isn't gold.
HHHHHHH
