DEAD LINES
Seems like there’s a few people out there this month who can’t quite make their minds up whether to be goths or not, preferring to dip their toes in the waters of gloom while lacking the flamboyance to carry it off. Despite its spangled guitar lines, sadly, for the most part this demo might as well come with “Generic Indie Rock” stamped indelibly on its forehead. `Pretend’ reaches out for a bit of Byrds-style sunshine but retreats into its gothic shell pretty quickly, while `Hollow’ touches on Ride and even The Rock Of Travolta for promising but too fleeting moments, but it’s tent pegged to the ground by strained nasal vocals and seriously needs an appointment with the college careers advisor about its lack of ambition. They could do themselves so many favours with a new, decent singer and a bit of attention to the bits that do actually work well here. Time and again they stretch an idea out over five or minutes, struggling to display any interesting features, bar a few power-chord hammer blows creating waves in the musical porridge. Hmmm, gruel-core, do you think it could catch on?