Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the individual tracks that have landed in our inbox over the previous few weeks. This time out we bring you a synth based banger, a strange and trippy singer songwriter, a cheeky 60s throwback, some big rock sounds from a rising band and more besides. Hopefully, there’s something here that will entertain, and encourage you to dig just a little further.
Monthly Archives: September 2024
SOUL ASYLUM – Slowly But Shirley
For the UK audience, Soul Asylum will be best remembered for an all too brief moment in the early to mid 90s when the band gained regular exposure on MTV. Their 1992 album ‘Grave Dancer’s Union’ gave them a belated smash hit, and with a lot of years’ distance it’s still very easy to understand why. The record’s noisier fare connected with an alternative crowd looking for something more melodic than the grunge that dominated the rock scene at the time, and the more tuneful numbers harked back to peak Tom Petty crossed with something that sounded like the Lemonheads in bigger musical boots. Although by accident rather than design, this would be an album that connected with a huge cross section of rock fans around the world.
Turbokill unleash a new ‘Champion’
Turbokill’s debut full length ‘Vice World’ introduced many metal fans to a band with a “classic” sound. Taking huge cues from the likes of Judas Priest and fellow Germans Accept, the album flaunted a whole world of twin lead guitar breaks and absolutely ripping solos set against a barrage of unashamedly 80s influenced riffs. On the album’s more bombastic tunes like ‘Pulse of The Swarm’ occasional even heavier moments gave vocalist Stephan Dietrich a massive platform from which to share a huge vocal, but on tunes like ‘Global Monkey Show’, the adoption of a more speed driven, party metal sound gave him the opportunity to truly soar. With numbers like ‘Fortress of The Universe’ showing how the band could also keep up with European power metal trends, ‘Vice World’ was an album that fans of traditional metal couldn’t afford to miss.
BRACKISH – Rear View EP
Since their formation in 2015, emo punk band Brackish have always drawn from a nostalgic sound. On the self titled album from 2022, the pop punk influence of Get Up Kids can be found jostling alongside even more emo-centric elements, creating something that’s both punchy and melodic. Despite some of the vocals being a little more off-kilter than might be considered ideal, the record supplied thirty one minutes of top drawer riffs, throwing the listener into a musical landscape that showed how, sometimes, it’s better to take an established sound and recycle it well than try to create something completely new.
PARADIS – Paradis EP
Metalcore outfit Paradis pull no punches on their self-titled debut EP. From about thirty seconds into the opening number ‘Boneyard’, the London based band truly go for the throat in terms of riffs. Following a lengthy synth based intro, the number crashes into a heavy groove where the rhythms mix metalcore anger with the kind of complexity you’d expect to hear from a prog metal band like Periphery, combined with the dirty guitar tones to match.