Furrowing the major label ground of gargantuan stadium-sized rock ploughs California-based AudioVent.
Inspired by a rather strange variety of rock music both old and nü, Audiovent are purported to delve full force into the art of songwriting and sound experimentation. A bit like Stereolab, then? Well no – not really.
With their burly blood relationship to Incubus’s Brandon Boyd and Mike Einziger, AudioVent songwriting nucleus, Jason Boyd Ben Einziger turn out a record that whilst palatable enough for your average 17 year old grunge part-timer fails really to make a dent on someone who is old enough to remember when rock was nasty, brutish, raw and came with a free copy of ‘The Psychotics Guide to Motorcycle Maintenance’.
Sure, tracks like the album-opening “The Energy“ and “Rain“ exalt an impetuous melody as well as an inventive rhythmic approach – but the ‘Vent’ through which the band have been allowed to pour sheer volumes of gushing mood-swings threatens to explode without the obvious discipline of a mature adult present during its recording.
In a nutshell – it’s just too much: too varied, too extreme, too slick and too stylish and though satisfying in parts, it’s an album that’s no stranger to mediocrity. But if the current crop of melodic rock bands are in your range of farming (Atticus Fault, Hoobastank, Pulse Ultra, The Colour Red) you may just have found yourself the proudest of the crop.