Review Summary: A hard rock/metal group playing 1980’s metal. The ideas are good but there is still something missing.
Black Tide’s Light From Above shows a great amount of potential but lacks the experience to create an engaging album over an extended period of time. Black Tide is the kind of band you play at a party; the music is relatively catchy and for the most part enjoyable and almost fits into any crowd.
At times there are some real standouts including the likes of ‘Shout’, ‘Let Me’, and ‘Shockwave’ and then there are tracks that listeners will find their finger hovering over the skip button. When listened to track by track listeners may find this album become slightly boring as tracks tend to blend into each other, the riffs sound of the same as they are usually all fast, chorded riffs, tasteful to their tracks but when listened to straight become tiresome.
A highlight of the album includes the track ‘Warriors Of Time’ which features an acoustic introduction and some interesting structural choices. The texture of this track is a little thicker than the rest of the album and includes some rather catchy chant a long “Whoa’s” that listeners may find themselves joining in with, before being brought back into the main themes of the song. Also of notice is the opener of the album ‘Shockwave’ fast paced, and bright it is bound to get a few feet tapping along with the music. The fast, tight guitar riffs should attract a few guitar based fans to the album.
Try to think of an album as a complete dish. You have the base of the meal, the accompaniment to complement the dish, salt and pepper to season, sauces for extra flavour, and herbs and spices for something extra special. Black Tide’s Light From Above is the main dish with a little bit of seasoning. It has the main themes with some flair to make it is what it is, but with no extra ingredients to make listeners want to come back for seconds.
The album has a rather 1980’s hard rock sound with many Metallica like tendencies displayed in their music with many thrash like riffs at the fore front. The music itself can be catchy and interesting especially combined with guitar effects and vocal chanting. The vocal lines are high energy, high pitched, and typical of the hard/classic rock genre.
Instrumentally each member knows their instrument; the drums are tight and fast paced, the guitar solos are tasteful to the music, the rhythm section is choppy and the vocals are recorded well, the bass guitar blends well and remains up tempo throughout.
‘Light From Above’ is far from anything unique in the rock/metal genres. They combine many elements and sounds from various genres including pop. For a young group they should gain a better sense of song writing ability and with better ideas to portray to the listener, with more experience the music should improve to a high quality level. It seems that the only thing missing is experience.
Highlights Include:
Shockwave
Let Me
Shout
Warriors Of Time
