Knock Out Kaine
Rise of the Electric Jester
Rocksector Records
2015
Knock Out Kaine is a Lincoln based band, that sounds nothing like what you’d expect… they’re a lot more edgy like a rabid hybrid between Ugly kid Joe and The Almighty, that kind of thing and vibe, a style, that I couldn’t say, ever became hugely popular, outside of Britain with people like the Wildhearts and The Almighty, only scoring hits, locally, really. That British, out an out rock‘n’metal, never really made it big, outside the isles...
So Knock Out Kaine, are all about that, a British band that sounds more American than British… musically they aren’t too bad, but their singer Dean Foxx, looks like he’s been raiding both Meatloaf’s and Yngwie’s donut boxes and sounds, like a scruffier Josh Todd crossed with Whitfield Crane and a bit of Vince Neil... which ain’t exactly the most exciting news, at least in terms of vocal ability. To his credit, he’s got that “WC” sort of “enthusiasm” in his performances, that save them from being absolute trainwrecks…
What this second album of these guys suffers from is basically, songwriting... while they do get both the sound right and their performances are generally acceptable, even DF’s, when your best song is as mediocre as “Cascading”… you can’t really go far... opener, “16 Grams of Heart Attack” tries hard, but ultimately fails, to convey, that the band are some sort of merchants of cool, that they so desperately try to “sell”… Follow-up “Fire and Smoke” ain’t much better, as it’s got a nice riff and lead, but not much else, other than a nice groove. There aren’t any “big” choruses here and that drags the band down... in fact when they wimp out on songs like “How Would I Know” or “Boxes” (which has somewhat of a semblance of a chorus however) they sound like some of those boring 1-hit pop-rock-funk bands from the 90s, that really suck… Think a slightly harder Wheatus or Jellyfish...
The album is generally very patchy in terms of songwriting quality with the last song “One More for the Road” which includes a hidden track “second part”, being marginally better... I mean c’mon, while the band, could potentially do something in the future, trying to present them like some sort of super-heroes, the next best thing in rock etc., is only gonna hurt them, since they don’t fit that mold, at least yet... If you tried and failed to capitalize on a blink and you missed him-cameo of Bruce Dickinson in your previous albums video clip/single, then you’re really going nowhere fast… plus you seem like lame and desperate. Not that they’re the first band to attempt, to get a shortcut to success, via association, but they just failed miserably, in doing so… just OK. Maybe they could be “really good” if they write some more varied songs with bigger, bolder choruses...
So Knock Out Kaine, are all about that, a British band that sounds more American than British… musically they aren’t too bad, but their singer Dean Foxx, looks like he’s been raiding both Meatloaf’s and Yngwie’s donut boxes and sounds, like a scruffier Josh Todd crossed with Whitfield Crane and a bit of Vince Neil... which ain’t exactly the most exciting news, at least in terms of vocal ability. To his credit, he’s got that “WC” sort of “enthusiasm” in his performances, that save them from being absolute trainwrecks…
What this second album of these guys suffers from is basically, songwriting... while they do get both the sound right and their performances are generally acceptable, even DF’s, when your best song is as mediocre as “Cascading”… you can’t really go far... opener, “16 Grams of Heart Attack” tries hard, but ultimately fails, to convey, that the band are some sort of merchants of cool, that they so desperately try to “sell”… Follow-up “Fire and Smoke” ain’t much better, as it’s got a nice riff and lead, but not much else, other than a nice groove. There aren’t any “big” choruses here and that drags the band down... in fact when they wimp out on songs like “How Would I Know” or “Boxes” (which has somewhat of a semblance of a chorus however) they sound like some of those boring 1-hit pop-rock-funk bands from the 90s, that really suck… Think a slightly harder Wheatus or Jellyfish...
The album is generally very patchy in terms of songwriting quality with the last song “One More for the Road” which includes a hidden track “second part”, being marginally better... I mean c’mon, while the band, could potentially do something in the future, trying to present them like some sort of super-heroes, the next best thing in rock etc., is only gonna hurt them, since they don’t fit that mold, at least yet... If you tried and failed to capitalize on a blink and you missed him-cameo of Bruce Dickinson in your previous albums video clip/single, then you’re really going nowhere fast… plus you seem like lame and desperate. Not that they’re the first band to attempt, to get a shortcut to success, via association, but they just failed miserably, in doing so… just OK. Maybe they could be “really good” if they write some more varied songs with bigger, bolder choruses...