Last night at the House of Blues, Ion Vein broke out a bunch of the new songs that will be on their next CD. In fact, the only old song they played was Faith and Majesty from Reigning Memories (nothing from Beyond Tomorrow). The titles of the new songs I remember are Seemless, Face the Truth, Love/Hate, This Is Me, Alone, Anger Inside, Enough. I can't remember the name of the song they opened with, and there may be others I've forgotten. They've been playing Enough for a while, and I'm pretty sure I've heard Face the Truth before, and maybe even Alone.
Both Chris and Russ mentioned these songs are stylistically a shift in direction, toward a more straightforward, heavier Ion Vein. So I thought I'd tell them if they were right or not
To my ears, and having heard most of them only once, they're not *that* much of a change. You can tell a new emphasis in songwriting, but the core sound itself is not unfamiliar. On Reigning Memories, if you take, say, The Power of You and Faith and Majesty, and strip the opening bits with the girly acoustic guitar and acapella vocals (*), what you have left is a display of chugging riffs and heaviness (granted, F&M is heavier than TPoY). There are extra dynamic frills to these songs, but the bodies of the songs are straight ahead "balls and chunk" (can't remember who coined that phrase but it's a good one!).
So, what it seems to me has happened is that they've just done away with any attempts to pad their new songs with those extra frills and more proggy touches. There aren't going to be many time changes, key changes, off-tempo bridges, etc, but what's left still has the crunchy recognizable Ion Vein sound. It's simpler, more straight-forward, a bit heavier, but not too drastic of a change from what we're used to.
My favorite song of the new bunch is by far Anger Inside, the riffs in that one are killer. If the new CD actually comes out in 2006 (!), I'm pretty sure I already have a candidate for one of my Top 10 Songs of 2006. I told Russ that one should lead off the new CD, because it will serve notice that they still mean business and will set the tone for the whole CD. My second favorite was This Is Me, the slowest song of the new bunch, but with a great melody. Seemless must be good because that's the song that started the mosh pit at the show!
It's still to be seen how these songs come out on CD rather than in a live setting (which last night was energetic and hot, and that surely helped), but so far the new material has the official Ken Luther seal of approval.
(*) just for the record, the girly acoustic guitar and acapella vocals are my favorite parts of those two songs!
Ken
Both Chris and Russ mentioned these songs are stylistically a shift in direction, toward a more straightforward, heavier Ion Vein. So I thought I'd tell them if they were right or not
To my ears, and having heard most of them only once, they're not *that* much of a change. You can tell a new emphasis in songwriting, but the core sound itself is not unfamiliar. On Reigning Memories, if you take, say, The Power of You and Faith and Majesty, and strip the opening bits with the girly acoustic guitar and acapella vocals (*), what you have left is a display of chugging riffs and heaviness (granted, F&M is heavier than TPoY). There are extra dynamic frills to these songs, but the bodies of the songs are straight ahead "balls and chunk" (can't remember who coined that phrase but it's a good one!).
So, what it seems to me has happened is that they've just done away with any attempts to pad their new songs with those extra frills and more proggy touches. There aren't going to be many time changes, key changes, off-tempo bridges, etc, but what's left still has the crunchy recognizable Ion Vein sound. It's simpler, more straight-forward, a bit heavier, but not too drastic of a change from what we're used to.
My favorite song of the new bunch is by far Anger Inside, the riffs in that one are killer. If the new CD actually comes out in 2006 (!), I'm pretty sure I already have a candidate for one of my Top 10 Songs of 2006. I told Russ that one should lead off the new CD, because it will serve notice that they still mean business and will set the tone for the whole CD. My second favorite was This Is Me, the slowest song of the new bunch, but with a great melody. Seemless must be good because that's the song that started the mosh pit at the show!
It's still to be seen how these songs come out on CD rather than in a live setting (which last night was energetic and hot, and that surely helped), but so far the new material has the official Ken Luther seal of approval.
(*) just for the record, the girly acoustic guitar and acapella vocals are my favorite parts of those two songs!
Ken
