Mindsurfer - Crual And Unusual Punishment

To describe their style is quite difficult. There is definitely elements of 'And Justice...' era Metallica, early 90s thrash vocals ala Defiance, drumming of similar style to Dave Lombardo (though nowhere near as fast or impressive), and great tunes. The lead guitar in one section of Broken is almost a straight copy of 'One' by Metallica, but it works. I think there's a bit of Megadeth in there also with some of the guitar noises.

Zenith Of Infection starts up with some dodgy hardcore type shouts, and continues into slightly sluggish monotony. I think the problem is that it's all the same speed, which kind of gets boring after a while. Tortured Man kicks in with some strong guitar crunching, and a very Grip Inc. sound, but unfortunately again suffers a bit from monotony, and tails off into the 'And Justice...' trap..

Mindsurfer are an undoubtedly talented band, but I think they need something slightly different. Perhaps it's because most of what they're doing has already been done in the late 80s / early 90s?

Beauty School Dropout

I recently stumbled across this demo by Glaswegian noise merchants BEAUTY SCHOOL DROPOUT, a name taken (I assume) from "Grease - The Musical". Unfortunately though, it's ONLY the demo I received, and nothing else... c'mon people, SURELY you can do better than that. The four song demo itself is actually pretty good, in it's own sweet way. Recorded over a year ago at Seagate Studios, Dundee, this four piece have a certain "Bubblegum Punk" sound about them - less Green Day, and more Ramones. Engineer, Stuart Firm, seems to capture the band well, but who the hell duplicated the tape? On the copy I obtained, track 3 ("Pass The Buck") is suddenly cut off in it's prime, and closing song "Bad Luck" starts up...

High & Mighty - Pornography

Musically this is really hard to describe. They're definitely going for atmosphere, and to a certain extent it works, although it doesn't seem to go anywhere or be for any reason. The guitar work is fast on the second track, the drums are slow, and it half works and half doesn't. I think that summs up most of the tape actually. You can see what it's trying to be, but just know it's never going to get there. The vocals are always deep in the background simply adding to the atmosphere rather than trying to tell you anything.

The closest I could get to describing it would probably be a dodgy ambient Goth band with metal-ish guitars. I can certainly imagine it going down well among certain people in those circles. The last track thankfully isn't quite so much like that, with more interesting drumming patterms, but utilising the exact same vocal ploy as one song on the Mindsurfer demo, and to be frank it doesn't work. There is however a small amount of sHeavy style vocals in there too which help to break the pattern.

Little Joe Crow

LJC are a five-piece band from Bo'ness, near Edinburgh. The first thing that hits you is the sheer quality of all three songs. Well produced, well structured, and well played. Singer Derek Baillie has a warmth to his voice that most unsigned bands would kill for. Ofer the whole picture, they remind me a lot of a heavier version of Adrian Smith And Project. Infectious, radio-friendly pop rock, with the dynamics of the intros hinting at the likes of Metallica, particularly evident in 'The Court Jester'. This demo oozes class.

Why these guys aren't already signed and massive somewhere in the world completely puzzles me.At worst, they'd find paying audiences in the likes of Germany and Japan. Snap up a copy of their demo now, and in future... it may well be worth a few bob.

My only criticism (if you can call it that) is that the producer could have made Nicky's guitar sound a lot growlier, but failing that, this is the first demo band I'm desperate to see live.