Ironwood – S/T (EP)
Posted on January 14, 2008 at 8:00 am by admin
Australia seems to be a hotbed of heavy music, as I’m sure a few people have noticed the American styled metalcore bands coming from that country. However, for you underground fans out there, there’s lots coming from Australia looking towards much more underground personas, including a few unsigned bands.
One such unsigned band is Ironwood, and I have to say the description of progressive/folk is pretty apt, and fortunately for the rest of us, the progressive portion isn’t needless goofing around with fancy fretwork and unneeded time signatures. Instead, they prefer long soft moments with clean guitars with a few instances of heavy guitars thrown in. There’s even some black metal thrown in as well, although there’s fewer black metal moments than there are proggy/folk moments.
This EP certainly sounds like some young players in a young band who are looking to reach pretty far with what they have at hand. Certainly the idea of trying to grab hold and make long songs work even though it’s just beyond ones grasp is a commendable effort, and one that gets held back by the singing and production. Of course it’s expected for an unsigned band to be unable to afford good production, and for the most part everything seems recorded decently enough, except for those guitars which have that local band style buzz ‘n fuzz. It’s an instance where having some experienced help come in specifically to change the instruments and tones would help, either to improve the sound, or tweak it a little, as a cold, stark black metal tone would help a bit.
As mentioned before, there’s also the clean-sung vocals which lack confidence and power. Whenever I hear vocals that aren’t sung very well but still have lots of potential, I always suggest vocal lessons. I hope people don’t take it the wrong way, as if I don’t think a person has any chance of singing, then no vocal teachings in the world would help.
Having an EP such as this, which is essentially like having a demo, is pretty cool when a band is signed, and in this case I’ll say I can understand why, as playing for now is tight to really impress local bands, which means there’s still a ways to go before they become a loose signed band. The songs are great though, Ironwood just needs to practice whole lot more and do all the right things to get out there. If demos and self-released albums from unsinged artists are your thing, Ironwood ranks much higher than the majority.
Released 2006
The Official Ironwood Website
Ironwood at MySpace
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