Black Trip – Goin’ Under

album by:
Black Trip
Version:
CD
Price:
£13.40

Reviewed by:
Rating:
1
On 24 August 2014
Last modified:24 August 2014

Summary:

"one inglorious, completely fucked up example of how to ... despoil the altars of the gods it claims to worship."

It could be argued that there is nothing new in music:  everything is a re-creation, a re-invention of what has gone before. It’s all about variations upon a theme…

Black Trip - Goin Under artworkNow, I’m no musicologist – I’m just a fan who writes about music – but my take on it is this:  all music has a basic structure, just like a building… It’s what you do with that structure that makes the subsequent result unique: but, at the same time, it is how you pay homage to, and respect, the basic structures in order to make the subsequent result what it needs to be … and hopefully one which does not collapse, ignominiously, around everyone concerned.

Unfortunately, this debut abum – by a band made up of members of Enforcer and Nefilheim – is one inglorious, completely fucked up example of how to pay homage but not respect (or maybe the other way ’round) but at the same time despoil the altars of the gods it claims to worship.  Not only does it intially sound like a poor man’s version of Iron Maiden’s first demos, but it plumbs the depths even further by plainly copying Urchin and White Spirit – bands who of course went on to spawn members of Maiden, albeit at different times in the Irons’ timeframe – and doing so with a complete lack of either style or respect.

Vocalist Joseph Tholl – stepping up to the microphone from his role as guitarist in Enforcer – tries extremely hard to mimic a young Paul Di’Anno crossed with early-70s Phil Lynott, while the guitar work of (ex-Entombed/Nifelheim drummer) Peter Stjärnvind and (former Nifelheim bandmate) Sebastian Ramstedt plainly copies that of Dennis Stratton, Brian Robertson and Janick Gers, but without the style, substance or panache of any of them.

It is a real shame that given the pedigree of its constituent members – the band is completed by former Necrophobic and Nifelheim bassist Johan Bergebäck and Enforcer drummer Jonas Wikstrand – that Black Trip could not come up with something more imaginative than recycling rejected ‘Killers’ riffs…

Track list:

Voodoo Queen / Radar / Putting Out The Fire / No Tomorrow / Tvar Dabla / The Bells / Thirst / Goin’ Under

 

"one inglorious, completely fucked up example of how to ... despoil the altars of the gods it claims to worship."

About Mark Ashby

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