Ten City Nation - Hidden Shallows - CD (2010)

Labels: R*E*P*E*A*T*
Review by: Andy Malcolm

This band is from Bury St. Edmunds. Bury St. Edmunds? On the evidence of the first song they are a pretty solid post-hardcore power trio, kind of like various Yankee bands who played that kind of music. Jawbox? Traindodge? That kind of thing, I haven’t listened to that sort of music in a long time so I could perhaps be barking up the wrong tree. This is certainly more polished than those bands, but pulls in some nice elements from the style. I like the punchy guitars and strong vocals, but I don’t like the guitar effects or that they don’t know how to end “Hidden Shallows” and just fade out. Oh wait, it’s a “Radio Edit”. They do more guitar effects on the 6 minute long “The Air is On Fire”. Personally I don’t really like post rock, so I find those bits a bit dull and the song is way too long, but has some nice bits when they rock out grungily. I am pretty surprised that a band that sounds like this comes from Bury St. Edmunds. I can’t say that I would come back to this as it’s a bit out of my sphere of interest, and there is a tonne of stuff on the press release that just made me roll my eyes, but musically this is solid and they’ve certainly got some reasonable ideas.