Hitting all the right notes but failing to stand out from the crowd.
Full of ferocious drums, finger defying guitar chords and vocals that sit tentatively on the verge of being middle of the road rock and full fledged heavy metal, Last Stop China Town embrace a multitude of genres before steadily coming back to a rehash of a late '70s come early '80s heavy metal rock band. Too soft to rival Metallica but too gritty to be compared to Motley Crue, Last Stop China Town are old school rockers, the type that existed before Rammstein showed us just how heavy rock could go.
'Just Ashes' brilliantly exposes the heart of the band including their ferocity and powerful energy, the only problem is it all starts to sound so familiar. Nothing leaps out and screams originality and as such Last Stop China Town find it hard to stand out from the crowd of other rock bands that are all relentlessly plying their trade and waiting with baited breathe to be earmarked as the next big thing. The inclusion of live recording 'Down to Your Knees' at least shows that this is a band that can transfer their expertise to the stage just as well as they can to the recording studio but again until Last Stop China Town can inject a certain extra into their music they may find that they simply get lost in the crush.