Against The Grain
Road Warriors
Self Destructo Records
2015
I had never heard of Against The Grain before this album fell on my lap and I’m not at all sorry for the first fact. As for the second, I’d rather not comment. To get myself acquainted with their work I also listened to 2012’s “Motor City Speed Rock”. Both albums fall into the same genre, old-school hard rock/heavy metal. So “old-school”, it could easily be described as outdated.
There’s not that much to be said about “Road Warriors”. It’s all pretty fast, pretty raw and pretty in your face. I know what you’re thinking, “well, that sounds pretty great”. I agree, it would be pretty great if all the songs didn’t sound so generic. At first, I had the vague impression that all the songs on “Road Warriors” sound identical. After listening to the whole album more carefully however, I found out that wasn’t the case; I mean the guitar riffs, the melodies and the hooks are not that similar. The problem with this group of tracks is not that they sound too much like each other, the problem is they sound too much like every other hard rock track out there. Do you know that painting technique “paint by number”? It’s like the band followed the musical equivalent of that, “compose by number”. A nice try by Against The Grain, but a poor result.
There’s not that much to be said about “Road Warriors”. It’s all pretty fast, pretty raw and pretty in your face. I know what you’re thinking, “well, that sounds pretty great”. I agree, it would be pretty great if all the songs didn’t sound so generic. At first, I had the vague impression that all the songs on “Road Warriors” sound identical. After listening to the whole album more carefully however, I found out that wasn’t the case; I mean the guitar riffs, the melodies and the hooks are not that similar. The problem with this group of tracks is not that they sound too much like each other, the problem is they sound too much like every other hard rock track out there. Do you know that painting technique “paint by number”? It’s like the band followed the musical equivalent of that, “compose by number”. A nice try by Against The Grain, but a poor result.