Avenging Force – The Avenging Force

• 3rd Apr 2008

There’s something of a lost art in blending and balancing and album, with releases containing fillers and listeners picking the bones for tracks they want-sometimes removing what the original artist intended.

On Avenging force’s self-titled debut the tracks are evenly alternated between instrumental and those with vocals-either by design or accident this causes an uneven flow and several missed opportunities.

Beginning with ‘The Avenging force‘, they try to set their stall out for powerful musical statements, and fall at the first by choosing the wrong track with which to accomplish this, and allowing an idea to be cooked longer than it deserved.

It’s symptomatic of the entire album that all the instrumental songs are stale affairs, unduly overplayed and lacking any bite, but that��s not the real problem.

It’s entirely acceptable, and sometimes completely necessary that singers play to the uniqueness of their instruments-some of the best vocalists of all time could loosely be described as ‘singers’. Avenging’s output is at best quirky, in a Dead Kennedy’s off kilter style and at worst it’s off key ramblings that not only impeded the progress of any actual songs, but stand right in front and frantically divert your interest. It’s as though the vocals are tacked on, with little afterthought-rendering and lines unmemorable and flaccid.

In order to pull something from their sound, because there is something amidst the issues,-tracks like ’Losing my hair’- Avenging force need to bridge the gap between vocals and music, instrumentals need more hooks and finishing and connecting ideas together is clearly the way forward.

That The avenging force was recorded in Chicago by Steve Albini is purely ’The emperor’s clothes’ and should be removed immediately, and burnt-it’s difficult to imagine if anyone would turn up to witness the event though.

Mark Cooper.