Sound&Shape - Now Comes The Mystery EP

Nashville rockers Sound&Shape are certainly not a band to be confined by the past. 'We hope to help Nashville break free of the country music stereotype' they say, bold and confident in themselves. And that assured sense of who they are is to be found all over their latest EP Now Comes The Mystery.

The key word here is maturity, lead track Tangled In The Mane tipping between the raw energy of its choruses to the spectral atmosphere of its more subtle verses - in this contrast there's the sense of scale that defines the band. And maturity combined with scale makes for a powerful concoction, one that's plain for any to see in this track's bassline; a power-packing beast that the likes of Muse would be proud to call their own.

Indeed, the classic and prog influences that this scale lends itself to are stamped all over the EP, in particular the standout track Our Hollow Reasons. Stripped to a backbone of acoustic guitar, the song becomes a kind of 21st century Wish You Were Here; an enchanting and surprisingly moving entity.

You often hear talk of 'distinctive voices', those select few singers who even casual listeners can instantly name and associate with an era. Normally such labels are applied only to eighties legends or eccentric individualists, but Sound&Shape's Ryan Caudle is in touching distance of such a label. And it's befitting of the maturity of the EP as a whole that so often his vocals find centre stage, becoming the focal point of the track; evolving beyond merely the 'vocal', and into an integral element of the song.

What stays with you through all four songs of the EP is the quality of sound on offer, testament to Grammy winning Casey Wood on production duties. Our Hollow Reasons in particular displays a particular richness in its closing bars, a beautiful layering of guitar lines that wash out of the speakers like gently lapping waves.

The Sacred and the Profane seems the most traditional track here; caught in a kind of limbo between Queens of the Stone Age and Foo Fighters - that intense, frantic rock that speaks of endless American roads and the sun beating down on the deserts that surround them. It's thick, gritty and relentless - a real onslaught of percussion that hammers its way into your consciousness. It's short too, at under three minutes, but frankly, that's all it needs - Sound&Shape are band that don't need to say a lot to let you know who they are and exactly what they are about.

An impressively well-rounded EP and one that really shows the band's talent to its full.

Now Comes The Mystery is released on the 12th July.

Linkin Park - Live at the O2 Arena

Linkin Park

11^th November 2011

O2 Arena, London

London’s O2 Arena was made for bands like Linkin Park.  50 million albums sold worldwide, two Grammy Awards... the list of accolades racked up by the band since their ground-breaking debut album Hybrid Theory hit the shelves back in 2000 goes on and on.  And now, ten years on, they remain as big as ever; an international music giant centred around the dynamic duo that lies at the band’s heart - Enter Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington, the former’s lightning-quick raps paired with the latter’s impassioned vocals and guttural screams making for a combo that rocks the venue to its core.  Where their contemporaries have long since fallen by the wayside, Linkin Park remain, standing tall.   And judging by the packed out O2 arena, they still command just as much attention now as when Hybrid Theory went four-times platinum a decade ago.

The set consists mainly of tracks from the band’s two most recent albums; ‘concept’ works that see the band exploring themes of nuclear apocalypse and war, moving away from their rap-metal beginnings to a more traditional alternative-rock sound.  It was a move that alienated many fans, but it gave the band scope to expand their repertoire into previously unexplored areas, whether it be the emotive balladry of Shadow of the Day or the rough and ready punkiness of Given Up.

Most importantly though, despite the shift in the band’s musical direction, the quality of their songs remains; still possessing that unique ‘Linkin Park’ sound, still focused around brilliant melodies and heartfelt lyrics.   It is the band’s earliest material that gets the crowd going the most though, classic singles like In the End and One Step Closer filled with seemingly endless levels of energy, the audience breaking out into miniature mosh-pits, bodies colliding against each-other with wild abandon as the songs’ reach their climax.

The staging is refreshingly minimal – most acts, taking to a venue as large as the O2 Arena, would lavish thousands of pounds on immense lightshows and props– but Linkin Park are content to let the music do the talking, packed tightly onto a small stage that if anything, serves only to emphasise the band’s enthusiasm all the more.  Scattered throughout the show are grainy, distorted videos dug up from the archives of American history, including Oppenheimer’s famous “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” quote.   It’s minimalistic and chilling touches like this, that when mixed into Linkin Park’s music, hold more power than any amount of flames, fireworks and lasers ever could.