Attica State
Comes and Goes
Someone managed to describe Attica State as: “The Beatles with more power and distortion.” I wouldn’t normally name names, but good practice does state that this kind of quote ought to be credited to its source, which in this case is The Guardian.
The only comment I can make in this respect is that they don’t. Not even a bit, not at any point in their career. Marion, possibly. The Ramas, maybe. Black Sabbath, definitely. The Beatles? No.
I’m really glad I’ve cleared that one up. ‘Comes and Goes’ is a rocking single with classic distorted guitars and simple driving bass. The euro-vocal and subtle keyboards add some much-needed chilli sauce to fire up the sound, but on the whole, it’s as if Ozzy came from Norway.
Without getting too technical, the overuse of compression on this track causes an irritating fade-in-fade-out of the drums with the skinsman being pushed out of the mix every time the vocal kicks in.
‘You Don’t Need It’ ups the stakes in the riff department and will probably be the favoured track for real rock fans. The vocal is accompanied by a drone-harmony that’s reminiscent of David Bowie and the drums crash their way through the track with tireless energy.
It’s not a bad record and it’s through no fault of their own that they’ve been compared to the wrong band. There is potential here, hidden beneath the more repetitive lyrics (“you don’t need it” repeated quite so many times in a track that’s less than three minutes long!)
Written by Fenton on
