The Beat Surrender

I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing when I first played ‘The Smell’ by Engerica. The lyrics are, frankly, unbelievably poor. For example: “Wonder years remember Winnie? / Her face was fat but her legs were skinny”. This is topped, however by the sublime “Liar cheater bogey eater / Look out everyone here comes Peter!” Peter? What the hell are you on about? Winnie? Have these names been crudely crammed in there just to fill a spot and rhyme by any chance? Are they taking the ****, trying to sing about some childhood experience (in which case the song fails to explain this adequately), or was ‘The Smell’ scrawled on the back of a bus ticket in crayon – I’ll leave that up to you. It is quite a catchy track, but crudely thrown together from a lyrical point of view.

Vocally, the singer sounds vaguely like Serj Tankian of System Of A Down fame in parts. And musically, the band put in a solid performance, if a little basic. I have the album to review, and will be interested to hear if they get chance to play anything other than your bog standard power chords.

You may hear something about this single due to the expensive video and the packaging – all I can say is don’t get sucked in, just listen to it and make your own mind up.

ENGERICA? OH, THE SMELL OF IT.