| CD REVIEW No Hawaii |
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Band : No Hawaii Founded in 2003, Gothenburg (Sweden) based No Hawaii was originally intended to be an aggressive Hardcore-geared outlet for blood brothers Smejks (real name Jonas Pannee, guitarist) and Biggus (Jamil Pannee, vocalist), but during the band’s first demo recordings the quintet (by then the founders were fortified by guitarist Carlos “Gonzo” Ibarra, bassist Erik Ward, and drummer Gustaf Albinsson) evolved both its sounds and ambitions with the addition of a new progressive, more atmospheric dimension to their initial musical efforts. Not unimportant in this evolution would be former Psycore member (in a capacity of recording engineer/ producer and advisor) Carlos Sepùlveda, with whom the band recorded the demo tracks mentioned above…tracks which were to be self-distributed by NH as their April 2007 released debut EP Bruce Lee In Your Brains to positive reception from press, with critics emphasizing on the band’s unique sound and hailing a potential for the band to establish themselves in the Metal/ Rock scene. Thanks due to the first positive reviews, the band started getting a more frequent live schedule and soon gained a positive reputation for their well-executed and energetic performances. In late 2008 the band again entered the studio with Sepùlveda, first recording 9 tracks in a “live” setting (in an effort to capture their performances’ energy) at Gothenburg’s Music-A-Matic Studios, then making additional refining recordings at the Belly Of The Whale Studios. Not sure when exactly the fine-tunings (and additional mixing & mastering) were done, but apparently things took most of last year…time during which the band (through their management/ booking agency All Systems Go) was apparently looking for a partner to release the album in physical form. News to that effect was already hinted at through the band’s MySpace page in December 2009. Confirmation came in late March, with the additional announcement that Parallel Music would also secure the digital distribution of the band’s 2007 EP through on-line outlets such as iTunes and Spotify starting April 7. By the way, you can listen to the EP’s tracks at myspace.com/nohawaii…and as you’ll notice the band has re-recorded the track “Isaul” for their full-length. Another thing they’ve apparently taken over from the EP, is the use of Spanish language in one of their tracks. On the EP there was a track named “Al Final Todos Pagamos” (the title strongly suggesting Spanish lyrical content, won’t you agree?), and on the album you get the lengthy (over 10 minutes) “Radio Magellanes” which has Spanish used in the opening passage and (sampled?) the radio transmission passage, and one verse after (the rest of the song is done in English…oh wait, thatain’t correct, because the final verse is also in Spanish). Now I hate going into generalisations, but reviewing this album track-by-track would simply take me too long, so here’s a description of No Hawaii’s music you’ll have to do with untill you go and discover it for yourself: a mixture of strong ‘70s Prog Rock influences melting with the rawness and raffinations of current day’s dark Post-Core scene…with music that is at one point almost Ambient and serene, while explosive at others, and vocals going from a mere whisper to shouted rough over nicely clean…bringing forth affinities to bands such as Neurosis, Isis, The Mars Volta, Mastodon, and Tool. There’s moments when you’ll swear a 2-guitar set-up simply cannot generate the kind of atmospherics you’re hearing…and in fact the use of outside intrumentation beside that mentioned is not unthinkable, as reading in the booklet you’ll find a list of additional musicians including Peter Bjerhem, Stefan Hedborg, Henrik Blomqvist, Ufuk Demir, and Carlos Sepùlveda himself…without notification of what or where they made their contributions! At any rate, fans of the above mentioned reference bands can safely go and buy the album blindly, as what’s displayed on the album is for sure gonna please them. People looking to broaden their musical taste (or broad-minded music fans in general) are hereby strongly suggested they check out the songs posted at the band’s MySpace page! In spite of my making this a “short” review (for my doings), I can asure you I spent many a cheerful (due to the quality offered) hour listening to this album…to the point of even belaying the actual review in order to allow myself more time with it! Hence, no surprise that I’m nominating Snake My Charms into my 2010 year-lists, right? 98/100 Tony. |
