Band : Sun Eats Hours
Album title : Ten Years
Label : Rude Records
Distributor : Sonic Rendezvous
Release date : 09/05/2007
Release : CD + DVD (compilation)

I made my acquaintance with this Italian melodic Punk Rock band with the 2007 covers CD Metal Addiction,  disc they shared with Japan's Nicotine (review posted 31/01/2007). Of course, that material gave a somewhat distorted picture about the band's own musical capacities...because even if they brought the covers with a "touch of their own", what you were listening to was still mainly an other one's compositional ability.

In said review I kinda took the easy way out (partly because I lacked the info), so let's elucidate somewhat on the band's history, shall we? So, formed in 1997 and still based in the little town of Pinarella Di Cervia, the quartet composed of Francesco "Lore" Lorenzi (lead vocals & guitar), Gianluca "Boston" Menegozzo (guitar & backing vocals), Matteo "Lemma" Reghelin (bass & backing vocals) and Riccardo "Trash" Rossi (drums) release their 2000 album Don't Waste My Time in true DIY tradition, on their own. Such is the impact of the band's music on the Italian Punk Rock scene, that they are picked up by German based label Rude Records (who've since got an Italian affiliation) for the 2002 album Tour All Over (apparently not Will, as mentioned in my previous review). The label consecutively also re-issued the band's debut album. With a live activity already increasing, the band gets the support slot for the three South-European dates (France; Spain and Italy) in the 2004 European tour of their biggest influence The Offspring, and thus get a first whiff of stardom playing in front of over 6000 head crowds. That same year, SEH is handed over the "Best Italian Punk Band In The World" award at the M.E.I. (Italian Independent Labels Meeting).

The Summer of 2005 arrives, and along comes the band's currently last full-length release The Last Ones, which gets a distribution outside Europe also including South Africa, Brazil, and Japan (the latter of course with a bonus track). Still very much with the DIY ethics (driving their converted van from gig to gig themselves, accompanied by their sound engineer Carta and manager Giulia) SEH starts off on a tour through Europe, beginning with a somewhat extensive tour of Italy, of course, followed with Switzerland & Austria. After the combined 20 or so gigs already played, the guys set off to Portugal and Spain, which they consider "The Promised Land" (due to the warm reception they've already enjoyed there before). After returning home for a very short while, it was Slovenia and Croatia the band invaded. Meanwhile, news came from Japan, that their album had been gracing HMV's top 30 chart for three consecutive weeks, so a trip to The Land Of The Rising Sun was in order (funnily enough, no direct flight to Tokyo from Italy, so the guys first had to fly to London, then switch planes). When arriving at the gigs, they found people waiting outside to get a copy of their SEH album autographed...a totally new and extremely pleasant experience in the history of the band! Returning home via England, the guys didn't even have time to drop their luggage at home, because 10 more venues in Germany were waiting to be visited. By then, Winter had come along, and we're talking 2006 now. So, by the time the band entered the studio to record the material for the covers split during August 2006, they had played a totla of 102 shows in support of The Last Ones. Not at all bad for a DIY band indeed!

The split again did very good in Japan (where it was already released in late 2006), and that's why the band decided to bring a Japan-only compilation of their material to commemorate the band's 10-year existance. Incredibly, they are invited to the home studio of the drummer of Papa Roach to record the two new songs that were to come on that disc. So, just for that the guys travelled all the way to Southern California in March of 2007. The album eventually hit the Japanese stores later that year. Right before that, the guys promoted their split-CD with a special Spanish tour in late February, putting in a total of 8 shows, the last one being in Barcelona (city where they had already played 6 times and had moved from a smaller club to a much bigger one). Well, no wonder the guys like to play Spain so much, as a lot of their shows there are simply sold out! But the real tour was still to come during Summer, and the guys played all over Europe again, travelling by van (with 16 people in it this time), taxi, ferry, and even plane! Besides the many club shows in Italy, Austria, Ibiza, Germany, the boys also put in some festivals appearances (among which Independent Days, Deconstruction, Anti tour, Eastpak), and again returned to a couple of Spanish cities as well.

Pffttt....that about took me around some, but I got there in the end, didn't I? Well, not completely, because I now have to talk about this very release, eh? You see, the CD in this set is no more or less than what the Japanese got, and consists of the band's favourite tracks off their three albums, plus the two new ones I mentioned earlier. It's these two ("Friends" and "Ten Years") which start off the CD, and are then followed with no less than 7 tracks off the The Last Ones album, augmented with bonus track "Faded Away" from the Japanese version of the album. Off the sophomore album you get a total of 6 songs, and from the debut there's three, the album closing "The Same Devils" in its live version from their Lyon show in support of The Offspring. With song lengths varying from 2 ½ to just over 4 minutes, that makes for a total of just over 59 minutes of listening time.

The DVD? Well, apparently the boys discovered the advantages of small digital recorders somewhere in 2004, and they have since been recording footage during their tours. Possibly originally only meant as memorabilia for themselves, the idea eventually grew to make the thing into a whole documenting the band's rise to moderate stardom (because, let's face it, they're still on an independent label, and not yet selling millions of albums, right?). To make things easier on the viewer, they've cut the main feature of the DVD, the "SEH Real TV" in 9 sub-sections, starting with "Ten years DVD intro", which gives you a fast introduction to the DVD. Next up is a 32-minute documentary of the band's The Last Ones Tour of 2005/ 2006, followed by a short behind the scenes of the shooting of the professional video for the song "Endless Desire" (off The Last Ones album) and the video itself. Chapter 4 is a 12-minute documentation of their supporting of The Offspring in 2004, followed by a studio report of the recording of the two new songs on this album. Of course the guys simply hàd to shoot footage during their 2007 Spanish tour, which is good for another 36 minutes of viewing. Next up, the "Making of "Rain", behind the scenes footage during the recording of the video for this The Cult song brought on the Metal Addiction split-album (again followed by the actual video). Before going into the "Interviews" section in which the guys let a couple of their friends/ fans at word, you still get a 16 ½ minute documentary of the band's 2007 Summer tour. And with the picture slide-show at the end, that gets you some 2 ¼ hours of viewing material. But that ain't the end of things, because there's an additional "Videos" section including live footage (with far better sound than in the majority of the documentary's live shots) of "The Same Devils" (Lyon), "Sincerely" (Barcelona), "La Mangiauomini" (Milan) and "2004" (again Barcelona). Then, there's also videos for "Sucker" (with footage from the 2005 tour, but studio music), and again "Endless Desire" and "Rain". And you know what the nicest thing of it all is? The fact that, with the exception of the professional promo videos, band members Lore and Trash (also known as Ricky) have edited the material themselves! Oh, by the way, when you puch "Play All" in the top of the menu, you'll find you don't have to waste any time clicking each item yourself, and will have viewed everything in a "mere" 2 hours and 39 minutes! Oh, and very clever of the band to offer one the choice of sub-titling (in either English or Spanish), because otherwise the world...ehrm, or at least the viewer, for as much that (s)he doensn't understand the guys native language...would get quite confused!

Nice stuff, but still a compilation, and therefore an item not to be rated in my book! At the end of the day, the product will still be a collectable for the converted SEH fan, although I can recommend the compilation album and DVD to any lover of slightly Metal-ised melodic Punk Rock as a means to get acquainted with this fine Italian group of misfits!

Tony.