Various Artists - The Best Ten Bucks You'll Spend All Week (Album)
Wouldn’t it be great if you could go and amend packaging in cases where an obvious error or omission has occurred? I felt this way when I reviewed the awfully presumptuous and bold, The Best 10 Bucks You’ll Spend This Week compilation. The belief here is that the listener loves rock – particularly heavy rock – and metal music, and that they will fork over ten of their hard-earned dollars and everyone will be happy. Not so, I’m afraid.
The original idea seemed reasonable enough. Take acts from various countries and cull them down to the supposed best, leaving a lucky number seven who will each contribute two tracks. The result is three Americans, a Swede, a German, a Dane and a French act performs in a gritty bar propelled by drums, guitars and testosterone – with the exception of All Ends. This allows a new audience of listeners to “discover new music” (or at least, discover relatively new signings to the Sony BMG label or one of its smaller divisions).
Ours begin the song parade with Mercy and The Worst Things Beautiful by Empyr. The guitar flourishes are like ones by The Edge in U2 recordings but a darker element also prevails, making it sound like My Chemical Romance. Empyr offer hard rock songs of Snowman ilk, but with eclectic sound bytes akin to Baseball. Neverstone provide one rock track, Count Me Out (think Green Day circa Hitchin’ A Ride) and a reverb-packed softer number, Waiting, which also sounds like those ‘American Idiots’ in their own lighter moments. Scary Kids Scaring Kids (pictured) – who some people may recall from this year’s Soundwave Festival – continue the momentum before All Ends strike you with some sweet female vocals. Later on the track begins to resemble an Evanescence composition while Pretty Words has some incendiary, machine-gun guitars.
Standouts Priestess follow, and for a bunch of Yanks they sure know how to belt out the modern equivalent to an Australian, 80s pub-rock classic, replete with harsh but raw vocals.
In sum, there are some interesting songs included here and it is good to see the label promoting new talent or signings, but the proclamation of “the best ten bucks you’ll spend this week” is overstepping the line.
