 
Amplifier are a very strange band, very strange
indeed. Located in Manchester, “Octopus”
is the bands 3rd Release and first as a double
CD with a playing time of over 2 hours! That’s
a lot of music right there so let’s get
to it.
The bands very unique sound is made up of a lot
of effects involved and with some sampling to
create the very mellow textured spacey sound.
The songs have some length on them as well ranging
from between 4 to 12 minutes. To me I’ll
be honest, I can appreciate why people like them,
especially people who are on a high or a trip
would love them; however I am not and I sit here
and whilst there are sections in every song where
there is some really nice musical showcase with
interesting riffs and vocal work there feels like
a lot of each song is a just strange ominous tones
and sounds to fill up a significant amount of
time.
I mean the very first track “The Runner”
was mostly consumed with silence and slight noises
here and there, in my opinion a very unnecessary
track that doesn’t contain much music; you
wouldn’t walk around with it playing on
your mp3 player.
However there are songs on the album that I actually
like such as “The Wave”, “Planet
of Insects”, “Golden Radio”
and “Interstellar” which I actually
appreciate as good music because throughout there
is music and not just random noises. However there
are a fair few songs that are very long and just
drift along aimlessly like the 9 minute long title
track “Octopus”, 11 minute long “Trading
Dark Matter on the Stock Exchange”, 8 minute
long “Fall of the Empire” and 5 minute
long “Bloodtest”.
Some of the songs take on an extremely soft rock
that is far too mellow and low tempo whilst some
other take on a harder grunge edge and then there’s
the aforementioned random noise songs; all I can
say is whilst some people may enjoy it I cannot
see the appeal of this band in the slightest.
To listen to this whole album has took extreme
patience on my part and a lot of the time I couldn’t
put it on because of how it makes me feel.
I’ve been and checked out some of their
older songs to see if this is a different edge
for them or whether or not it’s been a common
theme throughout their career; well their old
stuff was a lot more musical and heavy so this
must have been a new direction for the band. I
don’t like it.
2/5
Review by James Webb
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