It’s a well known fact that deep in the heart of even the hardiest metaller, lies a little squishy spot reserved just for those “guilty pleasures” – the bands/songs/albums that don’t particularly do your metal street cred much good but you can’t help but like (speaking of which, I can’t get that new Cheryl Cole song out of my bloody head!) I know we all like to imagine that we plopped out of our mother’s vaginas wearing a Slayer t-shirt throwing the horns up to a bewildered midwife, but the truth is that the majority of us happily soaked up whatever was on the chart show or TOTP at the time until somewhere along the way we discovered the path of righteousness that set us on our merry metal way.
So I always find these kind of projects refreshing to hear – when a band comes out of the closet and says “hey, we like other stuff too!” This EP contains six cover songs, and in the sleeve we even get a little explanation for why each song was chosen. Track number one is a cover of John Farnham’s ‘You’re The Voice;’ “We saw the film Hot Rod…having previously forgotten the song, the film reminded what a massive tune this is!” Yep, it is one of those classics you tend to forget about, unless you were unlucky enough to hear it every ten minutes on those Time Life 80s adverts that were on constant rotation in the late 90s that is! This doesn’t actually seem to be a million miles away from the original version; a soft crooning vocal courtesy of Renny Carroll although there’s kind of a heavied-up chorus riff. A cover of Jacko’s ‘Who Is It?’ ups the tempo, and then ‘Still Of The Night,’ originally by Whitesnake swaggers in with a debauched hard rocking rhythm, and FN’s token groove-laden sound. The vocals have a meaty, bluesy intonation and of course there’s the cries of “oooh babe.” There’s some classic solos and a classic rock stamp all over this one.
A cover of Shaggy’s ‘Boombastic’ is my favourite one here, and Skindred singer Benji lends it a Rastafarian flava; it’s heavy, slow and smooth! A cover of Seal’s ‘Future Love Paradise’ again shows off the vocals nicely and it’s incredibly radio friendly stuff. All in all, this is good fun to listen to and shows a band that don’t take themselves too seriously. Now, back to some metal…
http://www.myspace.com/forevernever
