Review Summary: A promising debut from the British trio.
Before I listened to the debut full-length album from RavenEye, I happened to see the up-and-coming band twice. The first time was in 2015, when the three guys from the town of Milton Keynes opened for
Slash, who came in support of his latest record,
World on Fire. To be honest, despite my absolute lack of knowledge of the songs they performed, the power trio managed to make the most positive impression. The band demonstrated their imposing instrumental skills and riled up the audience with their sturdy hard rock infected with a touch of blues. It seemed to me personally that the guys even somewhat overshadowed the main star, thanks to their energy and barely restrained hunger for attention, which stood out effectively against the worn-out professionalism of the veteran band.
The second time I saw RavenEye was in 2017, this time they opened for another veteran band, namely
KISS. This time, the British rock trio made a different impression. On the one hand, they still played their bombastic, energetic hard rock, but on the other hand, they no longer looked like boys yearning to get on a stage; they were a tight, road-tested band of professional musicians. However, despite that reduced naiveté and primal fury, they could still stand toe-to-toe with the classic rock dinosaurs. During the performance, I noticed a longer setlist, and following a quick search on the World Wide Web, I found out the band had recorded and released their first album in 2016, titled
Nova.
For bands notable for their highly energetic live performances, it can be rather difficult to capture and reflect that energy in the studio. Since that was precisely what impressed me the most about them, it was curious to see whether RavenEye managed to pull that off. And it can be stated that, in this regard, they made a grade-A effort. The music sounds loud and cracking, but you can still hear the individual instruments – so full praise should be given to the sound engineers. Given that this is a studio effort, some restraint is felt; still, the thunderous bass lines of Aaron Spiers, the pounding drums of Gunnar Olsen (Adam Breeze joined the band after the album was recorded) and the fuzzy guitars and crisp vocals of Oli Brown wrap the listener in a pulsating cocoon of pure, unadulterated hard rock full of necessary grooves. As a side note, it is even better to experience the LP using headphones.
In other respects, excluding the overall energy flowing through the record, the RavenEye debut falls into the same category as other British and American bands attempting to revive the 1970s rock sound. The CD has sufficient variety in tempo and mood, represented by faster, sharper cuts like
Come with Me and
Oh My Love, more aggressive, mid-tempo tracks like
Wanna Feel You and
Out of the Rain, and moodier songs like
Eternity. In terms of melody, catchiness, and overall quality, the material is every bit as good as that released by their peers from
Royal Blood or like-minded contemporaries from
Wolfmother and
Crobot. And this is perhaps the only thing that could be described as a shortcoming of the effort from these surely talented British guys. Nevertheless, the album is of a rather high level, so let’s hope that
Nova is not going to be their only LP and that there are many more to come.
