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Review |
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The Heavens are two friends including Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio and
Josiah Steinbrick from F-Minus who are doing what they like best which
is making music. This debut album, Patent Pending, began several years
ago when Matt Skiba moved to Los Angeles from Chicago and ended up becoming
housemates with Josiah Steinbrick. Shortly after Josiah played some instrumental
cassette tapes of what he had previously recorded to Matt, Matt found
he could easily write lyrics to his music and this is how the Heavens
were born. It was back in August 2004 when the album was fully written
but due to other band commitments the album has only just being released.
Being a big Matt Skiba and Alkaline Trio fan myself, when I first heard
about the Heavens I headed to the Epitaph website and checked out a song
on there called Dead End Girl which I instantly loved. The song is full
of electro beats and sounds combined with Matt Skiba’s vocals sounding
different than ever before.
The album is pretty mellow sounding with lots of different funky electronic
sounds throughout written by Josiah Steinbrick with Matt Skiba’s
vocals over the top of these sounds. The mixture of the electro sounds,
Matt Skiba’s dark emotionless sounding vocals and gloomy lyrics
make this album sound dark and pretty unique from anything I have ever
heard before.
The whole album is full of quality tunes such as track two, 'Counting',
it starts off with fast beats and becomes pretty catchy and morbid at
the same time with lyrics of "My knife wants to hide deep inside
of you". Track three 'Heather' is a song about a stalker who makes
numerous phone calls and wonders why the phone is never answered, the
music for this song is really soft and the vocals fit perfectly with it.
Track four 'Patent Pending' is the album title song and also the bands
first single, the songs the most upbeat song on the album and is full
of fast beats and very catchy lyrics. You will find yourself singing along
as Matt Skiba sings "High time we swore off everything we know. Sit
tight we'll be back in six minutes or so. High time we swore off everything
we know. Sit tight we'll be back with six six six in tow".
"Doves" is a nice little instrumental/electro acoustic track
which appears half way through the album and runs for 56 seconds and is
really quiet and beautiful sounding.
My favourite song on the album is 'Watching you' its another song about
a stalker type character watching someone’s every move. The song
is quite up beat compared to most of the album and quite melodic in places
and with lyrics that will stick in your head for a long time.
Patent Pending finishes with 'Leave' which has Skiba singing "Don't
leave just yet, we've just had a wreck, I’ll need your name and
phone and water for these slow dying trees, where gardens used to grow."
which finishes the album nicely.
Overall I love Heavens Josiah Steinbrick is so talented with the musical
sounds he creates and Matt Skiba has the perfect skills to write dark
morbid lyrics and a great voice to back them up and all of this together
is a perfect combination. True Alkaline Trio/Matt Skiba fans will totally
love this but you will get the odd person who doesn’t simply because
there not Alkaline Trio which is their loss I guess as this is truly a
masterpiece.
5/5
Review by Trigger |
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| Band
Members |
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Matt Skiba (Vocals, Synth)
Josh Steinbrick (Guitar, Bass, Rhodes, Noise) |
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| Track
Listing |
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1. Gardens
2. Counting
3. Heather
4. Patent Pending
5. Dead End Girl
6. Doves
7. Another Night
8. Annabelle
9. Watching You
10. True Hate
11. Leave |
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| Band
Related Links |
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| Review
Score Code |
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- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
-
What Was That? |
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