Oozing up from the dark, murky depths of Brooklyn, NY comes Black Water Rising with their self-titled first release. I must apologize to the readers for taking so long on my first review at EMURG, but I just couldn’t stop listening to this CD long enough to write anything! I’ve had this CD for over a week now and it’s the only thing I’ve listened to. My wife is ready to break my computer so that I can’t listen anymore!
Do you remember when you were younger and saved up enough cash to go out and buy the album you really wanted and once you got home that was all you listened to? Well, it’s just like that with Black Water Rising.
So, who’s this band I’m raving about? First off, the frontman and guitar player Rob Traynor, formerly of Dust to Dust and Boiler Room. Former Stereomud guitarist Joey Fattoruso joins Rob with nasty riffs. On the bass, we have Oddie McLaughlin and keeping the beat behind them is drummer Mike Meselsohn, also formerly of Boiler Room.
Tracklisting:
1 The Mirror
2 Brother Go On
3 Hate Machine
4 Black Bleeds Through
5 Blessed
6 No Halos
7 Living Proof
8 Rise
9 River
10 Sale On Your Soul
11 Burn It Down
I feel these guys are more of a hard rock rather than a metal group. They don’t have that edge and speed I associate with Metal/Heavy Metal, which is not a knock on them as they are extremely tight in their playing.
THE MIRROR is a great lead off track with an almost haunting melody and searing lyrics that this band seems to have in all their work. This is one of the songs that really makes you look into that mirror we all have and question our inner self.
BROTHER GO ON and HATE MACHINE are both politically driven in the lyrics with a great dose of hard-hitting rock and roll to back it up. The combination of their political angst along with the power of the music take both of these songs to another level in my musical mind. To have either one is almost common in today music, but to have BOTH the angst and aggressiveness in their music to really gel like it does in these songs well that’s a whole other thing that Black Water Rising pulls off!
RISE explodes out of the gate with energy and power. So much so, the National Hockey League’s New Jersey Devils decided to use it as their entrance song for the 2011-2012 season. Great news, right? NO!!! In August, the band filed a $10 million dollar lawsuit over the fact that the team had not paid for the rights to use the song. When frontman Rob Traynor heard about the use of it, he thought that was cool, but when he found out the team planned on using it the whole season without any compensation or very little to the band, that was not so cool. As of writing this review, the two sides had not yet come to a resolution on this. Stay tuned for more on this as it happens.
SALE ON YOUR SOUL…everybody’s standing around a six-foot deep hole…the devil pushes forward and there’s a sale on your soul….haunting lyrics from the chorus of this song. Haunting in the fact that we ALL have that little space for compromise in us. In some way, shape, or form we have all sold a bit of our souls. We can’t help it; it’s part of human nature. It’s a part none of us like to admit we have, but we do.
On a whole, this CD rocked me from The Mirror all the way to the final track, Burn It Down. It’s a very solid mix of heavy rock riffs and political angst run rampant. From Rob Traynor’s vocals to the real strength of this group, their playing abilities. They mesh so well for a band that’s only on their first release, something that many of today’s bands are still striving for.
So that does it for Black Water Rising, an awesome first release for this band that in my opinion has a rock solid base and has nowhere to go but straight up in the future. In case you were wondering if this is worth your $9.99. I got a copy for free and still went and bought it at Amazon. That should tell you all you need to know!
Your comments are always welcome and thank you for taking the time to read this review.
Keep on ROCKIN’!
John Solberg
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Who am I??? I am a short, bald and slightly over weight one-eyed rock and roll FAN! I do NOT have any professional writing skills from any schools or major publications. I am SIMPLY a music fan, nothing more and nothing less...I just love to RnFnR as SLASH would say!
