Review Summary: I'm bad, I'm a bad bad boy.
Raunchy came into the metal world with their debut album
Velvet Noise, a release full of influences ranging from genres as varied as hardcore, industrial, and death metal, and including lyrics such as "I wanna be the one, the center of twelve feet tall women gasping for heat burning..." it was one monster of a debut, showing that while Raunchy knows how to have fun, they also know how to release a solid record. Their second release,
Confusion Bay has removed some of the chaos in favor of more melody (don't run, they pull it off well). The immature and somewhat childish lyrics are still here, and talent of everyone in the group has increased dramatically.
The album opener
Join The Scene is a 4 minute ride of melodic singing, raspy screaming, and a mix between swedish death metal and american industrial sounds, showing you exactly what you signed up for when that finger hit the play button while at the same time holding back many key features of the Raunchy sound to avoid boring you within the first few tracks.
Get What I See comes on next with some impressive riffage(Jesper Tilsted) and keyboard(Jeppe Christensen) work followed by Morten Hansen and Jesper Kvist coming in with some groovy beats and bass. As Lars Vognstrup adds to the already intense intro, we get a taste of the lyrics that made Velvet Noise that much better
"I'm bad, I'm a bad bad boy
Just think of what I've destroyed
You might say that I'm evil
I don't care about people
You might say that I'm evil
I don't care about ugly people"
This is immediately followed up by a blast of screaming and chaotic instrument work by everyone in the outfit, which itself seems to be cut short by the remainder of the song which is a fairly repetitive verse-chorus-verse formula mix of screaming and singing.
Watch Out, the 4th track of the album manages to mix things up a bit by putting heavier emphasis on the bass, drums, and keyboard than the previous 3 tracks. We are greeted by a mix of groovy beats, heavy bass, and melodic keyboards followed by Lars screeching out "Watch out, see us coming! Don't think about running! Speak up, stop playing! Who cares what you're saying?", the rest of the song manages to continue sounding like a breath of fresh air. Everything seems to be mixed differently, the group sounds more in sync, and the track holds more of the noise we became used to in Velvet Noise. The following track brings us right back into the fun lyrical content of the first section of the album, but at the same time drags us farther down into the heaviness presented in Watch Out. The song starts out almost sounding entirely like a song you would hear from a generic metalcore outfit. This is quickly interrupted by the reintroduction of Lars' synthed-over vocals and keyboards that add a futuristic atmosphere to the song, unfortunately, the keys quickly become drowned out yet again.
The
Confusion Bay/
The Devil run of the album not only changes the sound yet again, but lends itself to be somewhat of a precursor to how Raunchy ended up in
Death Pop Romance and
Wasteland Discotheque. Heavy emphasis is placed on the drums and guitar for this section of the album. The keyboards also get their chance to shine for this run of the release, although the more chaotic and heavier parts of any given song continue to leave them in the dust.
Bleeding #2 kicks things off with Jeppe Christensen finally getting a good 40 seconds of not getting his keys drowned out by everyone else in the group, although this is quickly remedied when the drums start up and lead to the addition of everything else.
Confusion Bay isn't a groundbreaking album by any stretch of the imagination, however, the bright and almost happy sound to most of it as opposed to the overly brutal and angry sound of most modern etc-core music manages to offer something new in a genre that has been beaten, mugged, raped, and left for dead in an inner city alleyway.
