Band: Rise And Shine
Title: Empty Hand
Label: I Hate Records
Distribution: Soulfood (Europe) / The End (North America)
Release date: April 11th 2011
Review: CD

I’m pretty sure not many readers know this Doom-formation. Nevertheless Rise And Shine were formed in 1993, but I have to admit: I sort of did-not-undergo them either. Yet I wonder if that is a problem whatsoever.
Empty Hand has duration of forty seven minutes and is the band’s fourth official studio recording.
Actually, Rise And Shine’s Seventies Doom Rock is based on two pillars: the vocals and the instrumental performance.
When it comes to the vocals, well, Rise And Shine’s singer is the female entity Josabeth Leidi (sweet name, by the way). And what she does is rather uncommon. I somewhere picked up the relation with Marianne Faithfull and Janis Joplin, and I do agree for the greater part. She has a warm tone, not at all of the operatic or the Heavenly Voices-alike kind, and her approach is rather shamanistic than some means to express lyrics. She certainly isn’t the world’s best singer, but her original approach is unique.
When it comes to the latter, the instrumental approach, it’s a different story. It does not always fit with the vocals by Josabeth. At least, that’s the idea you might get the first time. Indeed it needs several listens before you will find the right balance to enjoy this coordination. The musical approach brings bands like Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Trouble, The Obsessed and Revelation to mind with nothing new / renewing to add. The groovy and rocking compositions are not bad at all, yet oh so f*ckin’ predictable / evident at the one hand, but truly honest at the other. Sometimes, very sometimes, an excerpt (a riff, a vocal effort, a bass line) is, qualitatively, above average, yet most of the time it isn’t but commonplace.

70/100

Ivan Tibos.