| CD REVIEW Bakteria |
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Band : Common Fates When I found this CD in my to-do box, I immediately felt I’d come across this band before, a feelling which was enhanced when I put the disc into the cd-player for its first session. And sure enough, when I eventually checked, it turns out I reviewed this Southern Belgian trio’s self-titled (8-track) February 2008 demo (review posted 02/03/2008, in case you need to find out about the band’s antecedents). Following the reasonably positive reception of that demo by the media, the band signed a production deal with the people of Rox Records (which, if memory serves me right, includes Machiavel bassist Roland De Greef, and brings out its productions under the Moonzoo Music label) towards the end of 2008. The band eventually entered the Hautregard and Rox studios, where, under guidance of Alexandre Aretz (Hautregard) and De Greef (Rox) they recorded the 10 tracks on this album, using Machiavel keyboardist Hervé Borbé as guest musician to add piano on the beautiful ballad “A Million Lies”, which also has violin played by Damien Chierici (of Yew and Foggy Stuff repute, he also played on the tracks “Unintentionally” and “Eternal Sorrow”). 10 tracks which (except for the balladesque moments) provide us with some nice Grunge-based tunes of verying intensities, samples of all of which you can hear at myspace.com/commonfates (in the separate music player). I suppose “Unintentionally” is to be the first single off the album, the band already having a video clip available for it (their MySpace page also displays some extra video shoots, among which studio footage). I still have the same comment about the slight accent coming through, and this especially in the vocally somewhat calmer moments, but there’s no denying that this trio has written a bunch of easy-listenable tunes, catchy enough to get some heads a-banging in the heavier moments, or swaying rhythmically along in the calmer ones! 81/100 Tony. |