This Modern Metal act comes to us from Douglas County, Colorado, where brothers Matt (vocals) and Andrew (guitar) Whiteman have been training from tender youth to approach the making of music in an as professional possible style.
For Matt, who's dreamt of becoming a Rock star from the age of 9, that meant training his vocal chords to several powerful techniques to preserve his voice and be able to bring a good performance time and time again! Together with his older brother, whom started guitar courses and rehearsed tediously ever since he was given a baby Taylor acoustic guitar at the age of 10, he's gone through several styles, from Classic Rock to Modern Metal, as the duo started their first cover band, playing songs by AC/DC, Rolling Stones, Kiss, and many others. Adding influences upon influences, the brothers eventually founded Red Tide Rising in 2007, and after having done a series of shows and tested/ changed a set of songs through the stage experience, the band eventually recorded and released their first album Perfect Enemy, with Matt only 14 at the time!
On that first album, Matt was compared to a combination of Godsmack's Sully Erna and Staind's Aaron Lewis. Almost straight after, the boy took a “Zen Of Screaming” training course, adding yet another dimension to his voice. In 2009, the duo was joined by another youthful prodigy, drummer Matt Guerin. Starting his experiments in music at the age of 5 by joining choirs and taking up piano lessons, he started playing drums (and other percussion instruments) at the age of 10, taking inspiration from such diverse artists as John Bonham (original Led Zeppelin drummer), Slipknot's Joey Jordison, The Used, AFI, My Chemical Romance and many others, he went through several bands since his middle school days. In RTR, he eventually found his perfect niche. Along the way, the band's fanbase grew ever bigger and stronger and, through a possible combination of word going through the grapevine, good connections, or what have you not...RTR landed themselves a deal with Spat! Records, allowing Andrew to steer the band toward an updated sound, performing as producer of the Inferno EP himself (and him being only 19 at the time). It also landed the band a support slot for the Summer 2012 non-festival tour undertaken by In This Moment in support of their Blood album. The EP was preceded by the release of the single Finding Home (also on the EP), and part of the sales of that were donated to suicide prevention organisation Out Of The Darkness, out of need to give back to community and great respect for the organisation itself.
Those dates brought RTR several things, besides ITM's members amazement at RTR's degree of professional (especially with Matt's vocals) control and stage enthusiasm. First of all, it gave the youngsters an insight of what it takes to make a professional tour successful. And secondly, it brought the guys in contact with the people who would help the band record their second album in early 2013: ITM's sound engineer Mike McCree, and producer Jeff Kanan (known from super-productions for artists such as Kelly Clarkson, Randy Johnson, Staind, Madonna, Rick Rubin, and others), each producing an equal share of the album's 12 tracks. To have their fans get a feel for what the album would offer (and possibly to prevent them from having to wait too long before the actual album dropped?), the band decided to release three “tastemaker” singles through iTunes, picking the material (“The Rising”, “Cold”, and “2:13”) so as to show different intensities to the band's new music!
Personally, I would not have picked other tracks. You see, where the album's title track shows the band from its most energized side, vocally speaking (with more aggressive backings than on any of the other tracks), but the overall explosive “This Is War” (which burst into heaviness from the get-go) shows an overall heavier approach musically as well. The title track however also shows traces of synth sounds added at the beginning of the track. “Cold” (also a sudden starter) shows a great going together of calmer and more energized moments, and a mix of aggressive and more harmonic backing vocals, and is therefore well chosen indeed. Oh...I forgot...the band's music is riff-based in the first place, with the riffs bringing in the first catchy tones within the songs. On top of that, or rather, underneath, nicely chosen lead and solo guitar passages bring in the enthralling melodic side of the whole. A great majority of the songs have a “dark” lyrical content which, in combination of Matt's vocal signature, bring a Gothic feel to the whole. Of course, the alternating backing vocals which are put into the whole with great care, only help to let that Gothic feeling grow even stronger. As a third song, I might've chose “Scars”, which with its somewhat longer synth bit at the beginning of the track would've brought some attention at that wacky bit in the band's music! Hey, as for that, “the Otherside” might've done even better, as there's keyboard lines within the song itself as well. That Guerin can actually play piano as well, is shown off in the album's short (only 70 seconds in length) opening instrumental “Rising Tides”. You know, that track, with its added orchestral passage, would be a great stage opener! I mean, it sure builds up tensions, see?
But then...I'm at the advantage where, for this review's sake, I've had multiple listening sessions! I tell you, when I gave the album its initial spins in the cd-player, I had a rather negative thought about this band's music, at first! You see, it all sounds too slick at the surface for such a young band. I mean, one would expect an act with a decade of recording experiences to bring a such sophisticated album. Nah, these dudes skipped all of that “learning curve”, and went right into an album which in fact needs those several listening sessions in order for one to get into the deepness of the material. I'm afraid therefore that RTR might take people at a surprise, and that some will judge the band on that superficial catchiness of the music before discarding it, in part also because of Matt's overall “down”-sounding vocal approach.
My hopes for the band include, that people reading this will lead a few more music fans to their music. Because this is truly worth hearing, you know (as you can ascertain yourselves by checking out the three videos and even more songs – 10 off the album, in total – posted at (www.) facebook.com/RedTideRising), and I feel that a relatively large amount of music fans may find this band very much to their liking! To think that, when I started this review three hours ago, I still had negative feelings abut this truly nice album! However, in making my final conclusion, and in spite of the positive things I said so far, I dó have an aversion for things too slick, and this will inevitably show in my rating of the album. And still, in spite of that, I insist: thumbs up for the musicians behind the music!