New Device is a new band hailing from the UK, coming out with their debut album signed to Powerage. Not that you’d know they were British from the mid-Atlantic twang of the vocalist and the assorted band member’s floppy fringes. Try as I might, listen after listen, I just kept thinking I was the wrong person to review the album. If you’ve ever seen Brain Posehn’s superlative ‘Metal By Numbers’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chiVMrWMHko) the same expression he has on his face at the beginning is the one that was doubtless written all over mine.
Then, remembering how abysmal my own guitar fumbling of decades ago was, I gritted my teeth, put away personal preferences, and decided to review this album on its own merits, not against my own tastes for thrash, stoner, prog, 70’s blues rock, and classic metal.
With their poppy transatlantic sound, youthful looks, and simple hook driven songs, New Device will doubtless find an audience with the younger Kerrang crowd, slotting in nicely to a scene dominated by the likes of Fall Out Boy. Indeed, vocalist Daniel Leigh, did seem to share the vocal chords of that band’s singer with his high pitched delivery. This is the formula they stick to throughout, occasionally peppering this light pop metal delivery with classic rock themes. ‘Pedal to the Metal’ is littered with classic clichés: “we’re on the run”; “we’re going supersonic”; “we’ll stay strong”; the trouble is it sounds like it’s played without any real conviction or experience.
Maybe it’s the fact I’m rapidly approaching my 40th year on this planet, and have gone to countless gigs in the over two and a half decades that I’ve been earning enough money to go to shows of my choice, but this band did nothing to me. I don’t know the back story of the band, and they may well have been slogging their guts out to get to where they are with their record deal, and if so, best of luck to them. The trouble is, they just sound like an adman’s idea of how to squeeze some cash out of those of the young generation who aren’t taken in by the so called R’n’B (don’t get me started, there’s precious little Rhythm and sod all Blues) and other manufactured pop presentations that fill the mainstream chart.
http://www.myspace.com/newdevice
