Review Summary: The “Hurricanes” EP is all about being simple, with the guitars being the strongest point and the vocals being the weakest point.
By No Means is a four-piece Hard Rock/Metal band from the UK. Peter, Harry, Ben, and Jack are a bunch of nice people, enjoying what they are doing. They have been together for six months and are now releasing their debut EP independently. Does this young band have potential or do they just fall into the generic music scene? Let us see where “
Hurricanes” takes us.
Peter Bradley is the vocalist while also getting some help from Harry White and Ben Collins. Peter has a rawness in his singing that adds to the songs. When he does try to extend his range, to hit some of the higher notes, he does start to get annoying. You also can hear him struggling to keep the note for the required length of time. The band also incorporates a great guttery metal growl on “
Behind The Mask”. The vocal style is changed up a bit to start of “
Lies”. Peter does go on the verge of having whiney vocals on “
Silent Scream” until the chorus comes in and you get the sense of catchy while in reality it is not catchy. This again happens on “
Your Friends”, but is pulled off better in this case. The Metal vocals come back at the beginning of “
This Is It”. They are a midrange growl this time in comparison to the deep growl from “Behind The Mask”. By No Means shows off some of their hardcore background by trying to incorporate gang vocals. These instances are usually hit or miss though. During “Silent Scream”, the gang vocals are not energetic; whereas, the gang vocals at the end of “This Is It” are energetic. “Your Friends” is the best vocal performance by this young singer.
Harry and Peter handle the guitar duties. “
Behind The Mask” starts with a clean guitar riff. You find many clean guitar riffs on this EP; the exception is “
This Is It”. There is some great strumming happening near the end of “Behind The Mask”. The intro to “
Lies” has both guitarists playing the same cords but in different tuning. “Lies” has a somewhat good solo near the middle of the song. An instrumental break in “
Silent Scream” allows the instruments to breathe, most importantly the guitars. There is no trace of Ben’s bass in any of the songs.
Jack Tann is By No Means’ drummer. You can really tell he is an experienced drummer, probably been doing this since he was around ten. Jack rarely uses the double bass pedals, which is a very refreshing site in the hard rock/Metal scene these days. The drums really help the intro of “
Silent Scream”. I really like the aspect of cymbals being used in Metal, which is why I am happy Jack uses them as much as he does. The drums get their time to shine on “
This Is It”. It is during an instrumental break near the latter part of the middle of the song.
The “
Hurricanes” EP is all about being simple, with the guitars being the strongest point and the vocals being the weakest point. These four guys have the potential for good things. They need to stay together and meld their influences more fluently while also going through the natural mature progression that you would hope young bands like this would go through. This is a good start, but By No Means will do much better then this with more time spent playing together.
2.5/5
