Tuesday, October 6, 2015

The Atom Age - Hot Shame LP - Yellow Vinyl

Untitled

Asian Man (2015)

A couple of years ago I came across The Atom Age.  They were billed as a band that owed a great debt to the sound of Rocket From The Crypt.  To the point where many of the Rocket faithful dismissed them as a copycat band.  I could see their point, though if there's a band that you're going to ape, I could think of worse bands than Rocket to try to emulate.  I thought both of the band's prior records were good, though perhaps not essential additions to anyone's collection.  Still, I was excited to hear that The Atom Age had a new album out this year.

First things first.  There is way too much fucking keyboard on this record.  It's all over every single song and it rarely adds anything.  More often than not it is just a distracting noise whizzing in the background.  If you removed the keyboard from this album completely, it would instantly get 23% better.  Unfortunately that's not the only thing that makes Hot Shame a disappointment.  

Rather than keep with the big guitar and wailing saxophone that their first two records were built on, the band has taken a hard detour into a 1960's, Question Mark And The Mysterians sort of sound.  While that isn't an inherently bad direction to go, it doesn't really help when your singer's only range is shouting at the top of his lungs.  

If The Atom Age are still trying to live up to Rocket From The Crypt, this record is an attempt to mimic songs like "When In Rome" or "Venom Venom."  Unfortunately, they just don't have the chops for this sort of diversity.  If anything, they should stick to the loud, fast and catchy songs they had been writing up to this point.  And seriously, lose the keyboard.

The Atom Age - Hot Shame:

No comments:

Post a Comment