The Beat Surrender

It’s an odd little E.P, this one. Track one – Look At Me Now – sounds like a soft rock power ballad, right down to the plinking on the piano followed by solo bursts on guitar (with strings building in the background). You’ve heard the sort – this sort of song has been around since at least the eighties. Track two is a cover of The Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’. Unfortunately, the vocalist has such a nasal whine it makes you cringe – although he does manage some rasping when he goes for it. I get the suspicion that he’s trying to sound like Metallica’s James Hetfield – why he’d want to I don’t know, and he’s not very successful if this is what he’s doing.

Thankfully, this is not the single; you cannot build a career out of a cover, especially one as paint-by-numbers as this. When I got to track three, ‘La Ultima Hora’, things started becoming clear to me – I don’t think English is the vocalists’ first language. This one’s all in Spanish. I expect now I’ll find out they’re Welsh via an angry email from the fan club. Wouldn’t be the first. Anyway, this track still sounds like a basic rock song during the heavy bits, but makes you think of your last foreign holiday during the softer strumming bits.

Finally we come to track four ‘Petroleo’, which is also in Spanish. I like this one, it works. The band are not trying to sound like anyone else and it’s a more relaxed product as a result. The guitar solos are still ropy though. I reckon they want to stop trying to sound like other bands, and concentrate more on what they do naturally.

BREED 77? OOO, SPANISH EYES……