I Am The Avalanche review
'Dead And Gone' is a superb rock song about the loss of a loved one. The only thing the album opener suffers from is that it sounds exactly the same as songs by: Lost Prophets, Linkin Park and Foo Fighters. 'New Disaster' comes across as an ode to the politically correct. There's no hint or whiff of satire or even sarcasm here. The lyrics make no sense and halfway through one is convinced that the maverick rockers have written a ditty about the pros and cons of new recruits to the education system taking their classes on school trips.
Predictably, a swear word makes an appearance within seconds of the track 'Murderous'. The rocker who doesn't know "what he's doing here" is a cliché of the genre and I Am The Avalanche show their inexperience as a band by failing to vary the content of their album. Track three sounds pretty much like the tracks that went before. The songs are devoid of sentiment and you can't get to grips as a listener with where the speaker of the song is coming from or what he's raging against. The only injustice these guys seem cross about is the fact that they didn't get a record deal sooner. That they haven't- until now- deafened the world with their "look at us doing an impression of heavy metal rockers" moans, shouts and screams. I Am The Avalanche promised the listener a unique stereophonic experience. All the listener actually receives is a hodgepodge of predictable rock songs all of which rely totally on the driving force of a guitar and the screams of vocals modelled on Linkin Park.
The stomach churning, cliché ridden 'I Took A Beating' re-enforces the notion that this band of rockers get their song titles- along with their lyrics- from some kind of random word generator. Apparently, the singer in the beating song showed manliness and gentle good humour when he took three separate beatings over three separate years. Are these beatings metaphorical? Who knows? Who cares? There's nothing on this album to encourage the listener to care about anything, yet alone the singer. Now, if we'd heard him talk to us about a nervous breakdown or the death of a loved one, then we might have had respect, admiration and compassion for him. If we'd have had that we would have been shocked, appalled and disgusted by the events described to us in the song about the beatings. As it is, the torment feels false as it wafts into the ear and the singer could just as well be singing about candyfloss as the problem of violence on our streets.
I Am The Avalanche would have done better to keep the alliteration in their moniker intact- calling themselves I Am An Avalanche instead. As it is, the band promises much and delivers little. They tell the listener than their unique sound will envelope and overwhelm all who come to hear them play. In so doing, they provide false testimony. This is not an avalanche of music. It's not even a torrent. It's a drizzle on an already overcrowded genre. Where rock music is concerned, there must be more than this.