“Argh, shit, fuck, no.”
Those were the words them came out of my mouth after hearing the horrendous ska placement in track two of A Combination of Both’s EP. Titled Free Beer, it is a complete travesty compared to their first song ‘Dirge’, which is actually pretty damn good. Track three is a sort of Allister meets Less Than Jake fusion of simple chords and rising vocals – fair, but reasonably uninspired. Again, there’s a bit of ska placement three quarters of the way through to break things up a bit, which works a lot better than it did previously, but it’s still not where I think this band should head.
There was a constant feeling of “when is it going to sound like track one again?” as I listened to this CD. It never replicates the promise shown there although track five ‘More Aviodences’ [sic] does try, the vocals are much weaker. Summarily, this strikes of a band with their fingers in too many pies and trying to please too many crowds. My advice: develop the ideas of track one and experiment along those lines – it’s far, far superior to the rest of the CD, both in terms of the good guitar work and the vocals which are noticeably stronger than on other tracks.
www.purevolume.com/acombinationofboth
Spud
