I generally find starting a music review rather difficult. Album reviews in particular. You usually have ten or so tracks waiting to be played. What do you do? Do you launch straight into dissecting the individual tracks? Do you go through their history, including former previous bands, previous jobs and previous girl/boyfriends? Sometimes you know the band. In which case it may be easier. Or maybe not. But regardless, it's not an easy thing. I had never heard of In Case Of Fire when I slid their CD into the player. I don't generally tend to read Kerrang or Rock Sound either, so the fact that these two magazines are featured in the press release started to get me thinking about what sort of music this could be. The Mars Volta and Muse get a mention too. So we're in alternative rock territory. The band themselves have the usual blurb about making "a difference", about being memorable, about being talked about. Which is usually the sort of press release that makes you lose consciousness. But don't switch off yet, because it does get better when the CD comes on...
The group are a power trio; quite impressive given that a lot of noise comes out of the speakers when the first track comes on. "This Time We Stand" blasts out some meaty guitar, which rather sets the tone for the entire album. The listener is immediately thrown off-guard due to the unbalanced 5/4 time signature, a sign that this isn't going to be just the standard, straight up "alternative rock" album. Throw in some bone-rattling drums, pleasant harmonies and tight, unobtrusive bass and you have a solid alternative-post-hardcore rock opener (a more meaningless appellation could probably not be found: I suppose what I mean to say is that it's loud and aggressive but listenable and wider in scope and palate). The vocals halfway through the track remind me of Echo Park-era Feeder, hardly surprising considering the fact that producer Gil Norton also produced Echo Park (the connections don't stop at audio similarity either: as "Element", their previous incarnation, the band supported that very band). Sticking on the opening track formula would probably sell CDs on its own. But, at least for the opening half of the album, In Case Of Fire give it a proper go and succeed in throwing one or two few jokers into the deck.
The guitars on "Do What I Say" are sharp enough to cut your ears off and "Align The Planets", fourth up on the album, pulls off an impressive take on the Mars Volta, "De-Loused in the Comatorium"-era (their best LP, before the pretension started slipping in) but without the pompous tedium and bombastic lunacy. By "Parallels", we're five tracks in and need a slight change of pace. This change doesn't last very long, the boys feeling compelled to swamp the light orchestration (ok, a few cellos) with guitar noise thirty seconds in, but I do like a rock tune with a three beat waltz time signature. And at least the cellos come back. It's variety, of a sort, and displays a certain level of thought that is often lacking from young bands. And to be fair, they give it another go later on in the album with "And Sorrow", which is slightly quieter but a no less intense track, replete with glockenspiel. The unexpected, but nevertheless appreciated mid-"Landscapes" prog-rock break also throws out searing, jagged riffs and vaporous hisses that flash across the musical canvas.
Then "Plan A" samples Martin Luther King. It's an interesting and potentially dangerous touch: the speech is rather well-known after all, and holds a particular place in the modern civil rights movement. Throwing that into a four-minute rock song could be seen as a little, well, overbearing, a little out of place. The lyrics attack the Klu Klux Klan, and while earnest, they're not particularly profound ("I don't wanna wear a hood on my head/shout praise to God and then dealing in death"). The tempo change is interesting though and the whole caboodle is pretty intense, at least showing use that the band are trying to keep the listener on their toes.
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"The Cleansing" is a polished, crisp track full of radio-friendly hooks and stadia-friendly noise, complete with sing-along chorus and a mounting, audience-incorporating mid-song break. It's not particularly original in this case, but it's competently done. In a similar vein is "Violence And Pictures", an energetic, euphoric track with sky-scraping vocals. Those two should do well this summer...
It's at the mid-point of the album, however, that things start to drag a tiny bit. "Enemies" bucks the trend by having nothing really to grab the listener's attention. It's standard alternative rock, a little limited in scope (particularly compared to the opening salvo) which suffers from middle-album malaise (I don't like to use the word "filler"). Another potential problem by this point (although I maintain that it may only bother some listeners) is that it's sometimes not very easy to discern what Steven Robinson is singing about. His voice, whilst not unpleasant in any way, often sounds rather tortured and occasionally mangles much of what he has to sing about (although Matt Bellamy does this too). There'll be people who describe it as 'emo'. I don't like the term and wouldn't use it myself, but it's true to say that the vocals are occasionally a little overwrought, a little too stretched. "And Sorrow" pushes it dangerously close to the edge, emotion dripping from every syllable. However, and this is a big however in this particular case, the subject matter concerns the death of Colin and Steven Robinson's father, so the added emotion is understandable.
Polished, aggressive, and noisy but with just about enough innovation to keep you listening through to the end: it's immediate and has Gil Norton's fingerprints all over it. This veteran producer of the Foo Fighters (check), Jimmy Eat World (check), Feeder (check) and Funeral For A Friend (check) keeps the album tight and pretty enjoyable, on the whole. It'll probably float your boat if you're a fan of the above-mentioned bands, as well other British noise-makers, such as Johnny Panic or Nine Black Alps. I'm not sure how much of a difference the band has made to my life. But I'll probably remember them. And I'm definitely talking about them. So two out of three isn't bad...
http://www.myspace.com/incaseoffire
http://www.welcometothenewagenda.com/
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