Plough the fields
Slaves to Gravity’s PR lauds their new album as being a “mouth-watering take on postmillennial rock”, whatever that might be (we can only hope it’s not a pointless new genre in the making),but to be honest the tunes on “Scatter The Crow” are more of a harkening back to a 90s grunge sound (think Soundgarden or early Foo Fighters) with a smattering of classic rock and roll playfulness to lighten things up a bit. The London based four piece certainly go for a big sound, consisting mainly of chunky almost metal riffs with groove edged rhythms and plenty of melody to smooth things out (the modern take on classic rock perhaps).
Heavy rock is a genre that seems to sell really well to a mainstream audience, probably because it’s not so heavy that it frightens people off but retains enough intensity so that the punters think they’re still rawking out with the best of ‘em. STG do have some classic riffs in here, on tunes like the catchy ‘She Says’ and ‘Too Late’ which are both very reminiscent of Foo Fighters with the heavy guitars vs. melodic vocals and the almost hair metal, raunchiness of ‘Big Red’ with its sexy bass and rising guitar riff, but they never stray into really heavy territory.
While this certainly isn’t a fresh take on heavy rock, there’s plenty here that’s good; the tunes are pretty catchy, the guitars are heavy with the odd solo, the vocals are strong and while not unique or interesting they’re certainly solid and do the job quite nicely. STG have managed quite a slick sounding debut album considering it’s been self produced (although it has been mixed by Chris Sheldon who’s previously done the Foos, Biffy Clyro and Feeder).
Overall though, however slick, the album does feel very derivative and sounds just like standard rock rather than having any kind of distinctive moments that you could say are really particular to STG, so in the end it makes you think of too many other bands you could be listening to instead.