Unearthed Review continues its inexorable progress through the Canberra musicians on the TripleJ Unearthed website.
Moving on through the “drummed” artists we come to Red Menace.
They have this to say about themselves:
Red Menace are a straight-up, energetic guitar-driven rock band that lay dynamic riffs and powerhouse drumming under catchy, bashed-out vocals. Their sound is a thick, meaty, and Aussie-flavoured combination of melody and aggression that is more evocative of the present than the past. They have been playing since 2005 and have just recorded their debut EP, set for release later this year.
If these songs fitted their description I’d be over the moon.
But the vocals aren’t actually very catchy and the first thing I thought as “Keys Karena” bashed out was “needs more melody”.
At times it feels like they’re bashing out the same power chords over and over and over again.
The lyrics are almost as repetitive.
It’s not simply that this isn’t my style of music. I’m a big fan of Trail of Dead and At The Drivein both in this musical ballpark.
The third song “Tornado” was actually the most enjoyable of the bunch for mine.
There’s potential here, but they need to put more polish into their songwriting.
Three stars