The Slants: Pageantry

Sometimes you just have to be honest and admit that the style of music a band are aiming for just isn't going to float your boat whether the band are hugely talented and masters of their chosen genre or not. In the case of The Slants, I will be the first to admit that listing influences such as The Cure, Depeche Mode or New Order is never going to be something that would get me excited. Add to that vocals that sound like The Cure's Robert Smith trying to warble in the way Morrissey likes to and things only become harder to penetrate.

So having laid my cards on the table, the question is, are The Slants any good at what they do? Well they do add a little more guitars to the mix than the influences would suggest and there are some little modern touches that add elements of Kaiser Chiefs, The Killers or Franz Ferdinand, however it does have to be said that they don't quite have the sharp quirky aspect that The Killers can lean on, nor do they have the energy and incisive riffing that Franz Ferdinand find from time to time.

For the most part Pageantry just ambles along without a really firm aim of where it wants to head and too often everything relies on a deep bass line to carry the song along without enough variation or identity to make them stand out. The vocals supplied by Aron also lack any real passion and combining his low register to some of the intentionally lifeless melodies makes the whole band sound somewhat disinterested. What makes this apparent lack of passion all the more disappointing is that on the odd occasion where Jonathan's (only Simon Young on bass and Tyler Chen on drums divulge their surnames) guitars are allowed to really let loose, as they do on the solo on "Astoria", then it's amazing how the rest of the music suddenly bursts into life and more of these little breaks would have resulted in a far more engaging listen.

If the influences mentioned above really, really get you excited, then there may be enough on show here to maintain your interest, however for the rest of us Pageantry makes for an extremely dull experience.

Track Listing
1.Every Chance I Get
2.You Make Me Alive
3.Lucky Strike
4.Who Shot The Radio?
5.Pageantry, The
6.I Wanna Break You Down
7.Astoria
8.Runing With The Dead
9.Fight For Future
10.How The Wicked Live

Added: April 24th 2010
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Band's MySpace Page
Hits: 2035
Language: english

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