Oh boy. This release started off so well. Those first fifteen seconds of “Munsterbrau vs. Me†I was wetting myself with excitement, finger-tapping, this was going to be something spectacularly original or so I thought. And then it all went wrong. To be fair it didn’t go wrong, Free Angle do what they do very (for the most part) well. They’re of the technical punk rock variety I suppose, but it’s lacking somewhat. The drums and guitars never quite hit perfectly together, the vocals don’t quite gel with the rest of the song. track two “Exit Adventures†is more of the same, but without that flash of inspiration at the beginning it strays even further down the road to average.
The CD’s last track “On Thurstonâ€, again shows the band’s potential. It pushes and pulls at all the right points, mixing up Free Angle’s melodic punk with something a little more (dare we say it) “emoâ€. Nice enough, and here vocalist Adam pulls off the not unimpressive feat of sounding exactly like Less Than Jake‘s Roger, at least to start off with, the accent goes and the song ends rather delicately for these punk boys. Hints of a new direction perhaps?
So, Free Angle can be really rather good, they’ve showed that within fifteen seconds, but by the same yardstick they can be pretty bad. The drumming needs to be sorted out sharpish because, on the strength of this demo, Free Angle could be really rather good, its just having the will and the courage to be a bit different, lets not see talent wasted.
www.freeangle.co.uk
CONTACT: freeangle@hotmail.com
Steve