Let us start by thanking, UK residing Greek band, Blind Tendril for calling their latest release "α" and causing us no end of grief by having to cut and paste every time we mention the albums title in this review, use the alternative keyboard we hear you shout, we did but the code Google suggested for the alpha symbol gave us us a completely different symbol altogether. Good natured rant over lets get on with dissecting this stunning release.
Liquid toned guitar chords that have an almost Cure like feel open first track "Dead Trees" and that on its own tells you more about where Blind Tendril stand musically than a thousand words could. Blind Tendril are not your archetypical underground rock band , yes they have crunching riffs and hard driving rhythms to spare but they also have melodies, ear catching choruses, alt-rock flavoured dynamics and a penchant for writing songs that "swing". It would not come as too much of a surprise to hear something from "α" make its way on to the playlist of some mainstream rock radio DJ's show as songs like "Genetic Freaks" and "Brace" certainly contain more than an element of "crossover" appeal. However having said that, there are also songs, like the excellent "Hanging By A Thread", which features Bjorn Strid (Soilwork/ The Night Flight Orchestra) on vocals, where the band show they can get down dirty and gnarly if the mood/song so dictates. There will be many who may pick up on a slight Alice In Chains feel to some of the grooves and vocal inflections on "α", as well as some rather exotic influences ,whether AIC were a large influence on the band is not known but those exotic elements are totally intentional the band taking traditional eastern instrumentation and mixing it with more modern equipment to give their sound a more layered effect and international flavour.
© 2021 Frazer Jones
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