Blackwater
Blackwater
The Path Less Traveled Records
2014
There’s a funny notion called namedropping. There’s nothing bad with not being great, but usually you try and hone your skills and you practice and practice some more until you’re good enough and then you try your luck in the big wide world. At least that’s how it used to be back in the day, because in today’s world of fake idols and instant gratifications, where your fifteen minutes of fame are finished before they’ve begun, you seem to need to have a lot of selling points and a good PR firm behind you more than you need to have written a good set of songs. The result of that is a crapload of mediocre of albums being promoted as the best thing since sliced bread, advertising the fact that they feature a fart noise by such and such or the fact that some guy that did a cover art for a famous band, did charge the band his usual absurd rates for a cover and then they probably could not afford anymore and they fucked up the rest by bastardising the rest with their own, lesser apt graphics artist, usually a friend who in most cases is a college student who’d do it for free in the first place.
Blackwater are a bunch of musicians from the greater Illinois area that name drop, like there’s no tomorrow, the bands that they’ve toured with, as if that’s some kind of big accomplishment (probably supporting most of those names locally – and not been taken on tour unless some one of these guys actually was in a more famous band as they claim to have been in the circuit for quite some time...)
They do sound influenced from the greater “Doom Rock” sound, bearing similarities, to say, Black Sabbath, St Vitus, some Trouble...(they also make a big deal that Eric Wagner has overseen the rather lousy but fitting to their style production job that’s rather 70s and demo-ish/vintage-lo fi. If that was intentional that’s OK, but it could as well be just an inability to get a better result – I’d definitely not gloat over “this” muddy/murky sound) and maybe a bit of the not so trippy works of Hawkwind. They go on to namedrop a lot of “modern copy-cat bands like Orchid a few older but, still relatively new bands, that do serve the same style, more or less and the even compare themselves with Iron Maiden and Judas Priest of whom they do a half-baked and kinda dazed and slightly confused covered of “Deceiver” that’s however not entirely out of character, even if it’s marginally “pushing it”, Deep Purple etc… (just for good measure I suppose and maybe because some of these bands featured guitars?! But other than that – I can hardly find any other parallels between those mega-bands and Blackwater really!)…
Blackwater’s eponymous debut which will only be available in 300 physical copies (why did they even bother?!) and online ain’t all that bad – but seems to be a bit one track minded, a stoned one trick pony, that just sounds too monotonous for its own good. Every couple of songs that sort of “sound alike” there’s a slight variation in the groove, so it’s not absolutely “boring” but with beats being slower than a dying man’s heartbeat for the most of the albums duration… just don't expect any sudden bursts of double bass drum out of the blue. Very AWMB!
Blackwater are a bunch of musicians from the greater Illinois area that name drop, like there’s no tomorrow, the bands that they’ve toured with, as if that’s some kind of big accomplishment (probably supporting most of those names locally – and not been taken on tour unless some one of these guys actually was in a more famous band as they claim to have been in the circuit for quite some time...)
They do sound influenced from the greater “Doom Rock” sound, bearing similarities, to say, Black Sabbath, St Vitus, some Trouble...(they also make a big deal that Eric Wagner has overseen the rather lousy but fitting to their style production job that’s rather 70s and demo-ish/vintage-lo fi. If that was intentional that’s OK, but it could as well be just an inability to get a better result – I’d definitely not gloat over “this” muddy/murky sound) and maybe a bit of the not so trippy works of Hawkwind. They go on to namedrop a lot of “modern copy-cat bands like Orchid a few older but, still relatively new bands, that do serve the same style, more or less and the even compare themselves with Iron Maiden and Judas Priest of whom they do a half-baked and kinda dazed and slightly confused covered of “Deceiver” that’s however not entirely out of character, even if it’s marginally “pushing it”, Deep Purple etc… (just for good measure I suppose and maybe because some of these bands featured guitars?! But other than that – I can hardly find any other parallels between those mega-bands and Blackwater really!)…
Blackwater’s eponymous debut which will only be available in 300 physical copies (why did they even bother?!) and online ain’t all that bad – but seems to be a bit one track minded, a stoned one trick pony, that just sounds too monotonous for its own good. Every couple of songs that sort of “sound alike” there’s a slight variation in the groove, so it’s not absolutely “boring” but with beats being slower than a dying man’s heartbeat for the most of the albums duration… just don't expect any sudden bursts of double bass drum out of the blue. Very AWMB!