Band:
Øystein Greni – guitar, bass, drums, percussion, vocals
Olaf Olsen – drums, percussion, backing vocals
Nikolai Eilertsen – bass/keyboards
Discography:
Waxed (1995)
Electric Psalmbook (1999)
Clouds Rolling By (2000)
Frontside Rock'n'Roll (2002)
Radio Radio TV Sleep (Live recordings, 2 CDs) (2003)
Poetic Terrorism (2005)
Too Much Yang (2007)
Something Special – The Best of Bigbang (2007)
From Acid to Zen (2008)
Edendale (2009)
info:
Produced by Øystein Greni.
All songs were mixed by Michael Ilbert at Hansa MixRoom/ Berlin, except tracks 1, 2, 6, 10 and 11 mixed by Bryan Cook and Øystein at Ocean Studios Burbank.
Mastered by George Marino and Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound nyc
guests
Lissie - vocals
Thomas Seltzer
Thom Hell
Released 2011-03-04
Reviewed 2011-03-01
Links:
bigbang.no
myspace
youtube
emi
The music is described as indie rock by the information I got to go with for this album. And sure it can be, don’t take the similar bands too seriously here since they are just very loosely similar to this band, I couldn’t quite recall any band sounding more similar but I am sure there are some that are quite close. “An explosion of old junk, new sound, fragile hearts, hope, strength, madness and dreams” that is how the album is described in the promo information and it is a description I think works much better than if I had started talking about guitars, drums or whatever. Øystein Greni sings with passion for the songs and he is also the one who has produced the album.
There are twelve tracks on this album, the last one is the title track and then there is one more track available which is the iTunes bonus track Magic Hour which is exclusive to iTunes. What I notice throughout the tracks on this album is that there is a lot of passion and feel in the songs, it is like they have really worked hard on promoting a feel with this album, I have no idea if it is that way but it sure seems like it. And the music really varies wildly between different types of music it is hard to pinpoint something but generally I feel that the band is a bit better when they up the tempo a bit, the faster songs are generally better than the not so fast songs.
Generally my feel towards this album is a positive one but there are some things that are not so very good which dampens this positive feel a bit but still the prevailing sense is that the album is a good one. It starts well with songs that indicates what we can expect to hear on the rest of the album but it is not before track three where the real things start to happen. This track is called Cigarette and is a really nice track and one of the real highlights on the album with its good feel and also high quality music. Another track that is really good is number six which is a duet with a female singer and it promotes a good feel towards it with nice artistic quality and everything. Then is track nine Nothing Finished Yet a favourite of mine as well as the iTunes exclusive bonustrack that is also very good.
So I think that this album is generally a very good one, there are some things that are not so good but in general it is a really good album as I have already said and keep repeating. The biggest plus is the record cover though, it is really quite something extra, that’s for sure.
So armed with a great looking record cover and very atmospheric and emotional music I think Bigbang will prove ready to take charge of the Swedish market now that they release their first album that will ever be released in Sweden. Of course if will probably take other markets as well and might work quite well around the world.
If you like the more melodic side of things and you do not need super heavy brutal stuff this album will be well worth checking out as I think that Epic Scrap Metal is a very good album.
HHHHHHH
