Labels: thirtydaysofnight
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Hands up who isn’t tired of post rock! You might like East Strike West then. Who are kind of like a mix of Coldplay, Muse and post rock. Make it past the laboured instrumental opener and a minute or so into the first song, and suddenly you are being drowned in a cloying mix of guitars, soaring vocals and strings. I suppose that not too many bands have gone down the route of stadium rock combined with post rock just yet (or at least any that I am aware of, thankfully), but East Strike West are staking their claim as forerunners in this “movement”. We certainly get sent far worse music for review than this, but the faux epic stylings rather grate after a track or two. The orchestral flavour is a tad too predictable and by the book, and the male vocals cause serious cringes, hitting the excruciating high notes in an all too familiar fashion. Some other stuff on here is a bit less generic, sort of reminding me of Rising Tide era Sunny Day Real Estate, but it all retains delusions of being on the soundtrack to next Summer’s blockbuster movie in the scene where a giant robot is on fire whilst it punches New York to the ground in slow motion.
You’re pretty much getting no surprises here, all the songs are about 4 or 5 minutes long, they all deal in moodiness, orchestration, crescendo and sombre moments. For the genre, it’s above average, but I would not be hesitant in suggesting that very few readers of Collective Zine are that enamored with the concept of stadium post rock.