Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Autoviolet - Autoviolet EP CD Review


When Evanescence unleashed the single “Bring Me to Life” upon the radio listening and MTV watching masses, I seriously thought that there would be hundreds upon hundreds of copycat bands trying to ape the female-fronted, emotional rock sound found in the song. It was slightly different than most of what was popular at the time so people latched onto it and radio stations played it over and over again—too many times if you ask me. Oddly, there weren’t very many copycat bands to follow in Evanescence’s steps, which I was somewhat glad about. It seems like whenever a slightly underexposed genre gets even a little time in the limelight, every third new band tries to jump into that genre.

Even though there weren’t a ton of copycats, there were some and, as I’m sure you can guess by now, Autoviolet are one of the few that cropped up. With this being an independently released EP, you can’t expect anything near the level of production that a major label band would have, but for the most part this EP comes off very professional sounding. Even with a professional feel, the EP is ultimately underwhelming.

Utilizing a basic hard rock / metal approach, augmenting it with electronics, and finishing it off with melodic female vocals, Autoviolet create a release that is easily listenable, but lacking anything to really bring a listener back for repeated listens. There are positives to this disc, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t enough to overcome the average nature of the rest of the effort.

One song will stand out amongst the rest—“Fragment Mind”. In drastic opposition to the rest of the songs on this cd, “Fragment Mind” has a poppy and jazzy feel for the first half of the song with a swagger to it that makes you wish the rest of the cd would follow its pattern. Once the middle of the song is reached, though, the band falls back into the basic emotional rock trappings that define most of their songs.

The final track, “No More Now” also takes on a jazzy, flowing feel throughout which sets it apart from the rest of the songs, but at times the song feels a little too basic. This doesn’t subtract from its vibrancy, but the transitions made throughout the song to using distorted guitars in favor of the already established funky flow do take away from it.

If Autoviolet were to focus less on the blasé rock elements of their sound and give more attention to the potential eclectic-ness that they possess, we’d be in for a heck of a jazzy-electo-funktastic-rock treat, but until they break out of the trappings that are holding them down, they won’t be able to create a name for themselves in such a crowded musical arena.

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