CD REVIEW!!!
Artist: Various Artists
CD: "POST-grunge II"
Of course you're wondering about the good song to dollar ratio. ie: Sure this thing is on only 5 bucks but how much of it sucks and how much of it will I be groaning over in a week and a half?
Relax, there's isn't a song on this comp that makes me want to rip it out of the player and send it sailing against the far wall of the (sic) Things HQ. Not a single one.
Some songs are better than others, true. But but nothing blows.
Two of my favorite Seattle bands can be found on "POST-grunge II": Warning: Danger! (this time around cautioning us about "Killer Bees") and The Keeper (who blow away the competition with their whiskey-addled Dungeons & Dragons dirge epic "Tonight We Ride"). But it's not just my personal favs that make this a solid collection.
Dragstrip Riot and Hearseburner both prove they deserve their following with their entries ("In Flames" and "Warplan", respectively). But the reason we buy comps (or, at least, the reason we should by comps) is not to get songs by artists we already dig but to find new artist to recharge our rock/n/roll batteries on.
As I mentioned earlier there's no clunkers to be found here, so that makes picking my breakout rookie a bit of a challenge, but, I'm going with (drum roll, etc):
Lozen performing "Unspeakable Truths"
I do have a couple of caveats about this disc.
The first is the appearance. The front cover (with its nuclear/volcano) is serviceable but the back is unattractive. What's worse is that the front and back covers are not tied together in any fashion.
This may seem petty, but if you're browsing through CDs at the store the number one reason you're going to pick up a disc and give it a good once over is its appearance. I'm not sure if I'd take a hard look at "POST-grunge II" if I stumbled upon it at my local music emporium.
My other (also petty) complaint is in regards to finding out more information on the bands. POST-grunge is a not-for-profit that has the goal of exposing good band to the public. And I know that they have to do this on the cheap. *BUT* I wish they'd have sacrificed some of the room dedicated to the "thank yous" to tell us something the bands found on this compilation. Heck the packaging doesn't even mention that these are bands from the Pacific Northwest, regionalism generally being a selling point I'm surprised by this. Yes, we're all competent people in the online age and we can all look but the artists... but still.
So... to sum up.
This is another great local comp that you should buy because the songs are a freakin' blast and the music makes up for any other short comings.
http://www.myspace.com/postgrunge
