|
by jessica cochran (lemmingcontrol) / chris earnhart (Pocket) - Mar 01, 2005
Misk Heavy Manufacturing Concern - Self-titled Review #1 - Jessica Cochran Misk Heavy Manufacturing Concern is mainly an instrumental band from Champaign. The music consists of guitars, bass and drums, your basic rock formula, and the songs "21 Dollar Bill" and "I Am So Disappointed in You" both have some sparse lyrics. The instrumentation is a little lacking throughout this album. The songs are very repetitive and droning, and are too long for what material is in them. Most of the songs are about the same tempo, making it hard to distinguish one song from another. In spite of this, you can tell that the band members are good at playing their instruments, they just need work on the songwriting. The lyrical aspect of the two songs that do have lyrics is pretty bizarre. The words are spoken, and in a slightly whiny voice that makes the words seem like a kind of joke. The words themselves are also bizarre, and not quite coherent. Spoken word does not fit well at all with the type of music Misk is playing. Misk is not really interesting enough to pull off the whole instrumental thing, but not good enough singers or lyricists to pull off being a band with singing. If they got themselves a good singer/writer, then their songs might stand out from one another and be a little easier to sit through. I'd say they need a little work, but there are some promising aspects to this CD. You can check out mp3's on their website to see if you can find more in them than I did. www.chooserock.com. Review #2 - Chris Earnhart Misk is an instrumental band utilizing a guitar, bass, and drums to provide a hit or miss album, that is worth checking out for its new flavor and to discover another way a band can work without a lead vocalist. What do I mean by hit or miss? I mean that the main problem with the album is that a few of the tracks are uninteresting and do not really add to the overall feel of the album. This means that the flow is marginally disrupted, and the flow is important in an instrumental album. This problem can be avoided by just skipping some tracks, but of course it is worth mentioning. The strongest point of this album is that it is an instrumental album that one can rock out too. While my experience with instrumental bands is by no means extensive, I do have some. And many, if not most, instrumental bands have catchiness and rocking take secondary roles in favor of being more technical. This is not to say that Misk's music is overly simple, but that it provides fun and involving riffs that can draw listeners not ordinarily fans of longer and more technical instrumental music. I've also had the album playing on repeat for a few days now, so I would like to mention that it does not get boring easily. I would recommend this album to many people, including persons looking into diversifying their local music collections and persons who like instrumental rock. If you are interested, then I would advise checking them out at www.chooserock.com. |