Just in time for Bandcamp Friday, solo act Caustic Waves drops a new 6-track EP. Software engineer nerd by day, music production nerd by night, Neil Thomas has been a fan of bands such as Incubus, Far, Deftones and Helmet for a long time and finally he’s got a chance to add his own music to the mix.
All six tracks fit into the alt-rock, post-grunge kind of sphere. The guitars are dirty and the bass thrums while Neil’s vocals are absolutely spot on (including the layered ones where it sounds like he has a handful of backing singers!). Opener “Knocking At My Door” is OK, but “Invisible Enemy” which follows blew my socks off. This is a great track, heavy yet flowing, with superb lyrics.
“Regenerate” really thumps, while “Barriers” pushes ever so close to pop-punk with a sneaky bounciness hidden within. “Idiocracy” rails against about 50% of Twitter (and 67% of Facebook) in its conspiracy-theory bashing vocals, before the release drives itself to an end with the comparatively lo-fi “Evolution”.
This is a nice little collection of songs, well written and performed, but one thing struck me very early on and that’s the quality of the production. I noted that Neil’s a music producer when he’s not tearing his hair out over stupid coding errors, and on the strength of Full Circle I’d say he’s damn good at his second job. If there’s one thing that does jump out when we get an independent release it’s the production. A great song can be ruined if the mix sucks and more often than not this is down to the drums or the vocals. Often bands just don’t seem to want to tell their singer that either they aren’t as good as they think they are, or that their vocals don’t need to drown everything else out.
No such issues here. The vocals are just spot on, the drums sound great and the whole package is stupidly well done. Having this wrapped round a half dozen decent little tunes and you have something which really should be catching your eye on the day where all your coin (on Bandcamp at least) will be finding its way into the creator’s pocket.
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Full Circle is out on March 3rd
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