On Broken Wings – Going Down

I know I’m too old for On Broken Wings. How? Because the printing on the CD sleeve of Going Down is so feint and uses such weird fonts that even in bright sunlight I have to squint to make it out. And because I cannot bear to listen to them at the volume their music clearly demands.

So it’s all too tempting to critique them on their song titles, which fascinate in themselves. Is I Do My Crosswords In Pen an intellectual boast, a sign of dominance or a mark of stubbornness? Is I Hope You Don’t Get Raped In Cancun a sneer or a heartfelt wish? And where exactly do violins fit in? Not in the musical mix, that’s for sure.

It’s pretty hard to work out while listening to the music; I am certainly no wiser as to what LMTR stands for (although it does have a rather nice bass solo and jazzy guitar intermission). The band obviously want to be Slipknot, and one singer forces himself to groan and shriek large portions of the lyrics, but then up pops a second, startlingly ordinary voice to deliver the more melodic parts.

There isn’t the contrast you get with a band like System Of A Down, no startling interplay between two modes of delivery, just a rather strange change of gears between the two.

Although there are occasional inspired flashes of musicality, for the most part this is a leaden retread in a genre that seems to invite a repetitious lack of innovation. It doesn’t stop their American fans from leaping up and down like loons – in fact the very repetitiveness probably makes the music even more suitable for the moshpit.