Godzilla Motor Company
s/t
(c)1998
Review by Neil St.Laurent
Thanks to the band for the Cassette
Everything we know about Godzilla Motor Company has been provided to
use by this single [demo?] cassette, which means we don't really know
much about the band, except for what counts: the music.
The immediate reaction to Godzilla Motor Company (depending on what
side you start on probably) is to start labelling all of the bands
that they either sound like or were heavily influenced by, such as
Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and other grunge style bands. Given
this statement, GMC (the semblence to the car company is unlikely
coincidental) has a daunting road ahead of them to make themselve
known within a scene of such great artists (it is possible that
'great' would be better replaced with 'mainstream popular' in the
context of this magazine). All the classic traits of alternative /
grunge are present in this demo, the quite broken sound (i.e. without
a great deal of melodic flow), short, simple riffs, and a variant of
styles ranging from hard pop to heavy metal; possibly, to the credit
of the band, GMC's range of influences starts rather from hard rock than
hard pop.
So do they achieve stepping out of the confines of this well
explored, almost fad, genre? The music is definitely original, but
it seems to lack the energy required to make this music exciting.
One could almost venture to say that this demo is over-produced!
There isn't much of a raw sound, or any adrenaline pumping fare;
overall the music seems kind of flat and uninteresting (which I can
likely guarantee, even without seeing them live, that anybody who has
seen them live will disagree with that statement).
In the end it may be an unfortunate timing and selection of genres
that will hurt GMC. The music is original, and although not overly
exciting, certainly isn't entirely boring -- it even has a decent
amount of pure metal approaches to likely even keep a metal head
interested. GMC plays in the midst of the decline of the popularity
of this music, which although doesn't diminish it's quality, the band
will always receive negative criticism because of the time they are
existing.
Contact:
Email: gzlamoco@aol.com
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