Review Vinder - Vertigo – The Story of Vincent O´Leary 2011

The story of Vincent O’Leary begins in a garage (or car hole) where five middle aged men have decided that the wait for that record deal they’ve been fantasising long enough about is over and because of this they finance the release themselves on their own newly started label. With a purple cover and a title that takes the thoughts to Dream Theater they make a sort of progressive heavy metal that sounds as down to earth as the sink hole that opened in Schmalkalden last November. This could be your next door neighbours playing together in their rebuilt car hole or basement, that after years of practice dreaming about becoming a new Iron Maiden has realised time is running out and now or never is the time for their release. Unfortunately, I must say this feels more like never than now.

That’s how I feel this sound, but you don’t have to be saddened by that because the world isn’t black and white. I get very mixed feelings when I hear this album, that has been made as a horror comic book adventure. The eleven tracks feels very much like a local demo band that only has come a bit further than most. However, I think it’s fair to give them a honest chance and not disregard them an simply unfinished and uninteresting because despite what I just said above, this is actually the second album from this German constellation and it comes in a package with really nice graphical images. The music is not the best when it comes to sound quality and instrumental showcase, they lack variation and it isn’t the most advanced instrumental handling the world has seen, but they have nice melodies and I can’t find any major faults when listening to the album. What I can find, however, are traces of a very low budget, which isn’t very good. The production sounds very cheap and feels very cheap, but behind the curtain held up by this cheap-sounding factors (the bad sound quality and not so great mix) we have an album I think would actually sound pretty good if it had been made with just a little bit more of everything.

’Vertigo – The Story of Vincent O´Leary’ feels like an album that should be bigger and grander in the sound. The guitars are good but sounds way too simple and almost like they were recorded with a mono-equipment in one straight recording. You can barely hear the drums at all. The vocals are also badly mixed, somewhere down in the middle of everything where it doesn’t have the possibility to convince anyone and I especially dislike the backup vocals that is sung in the choruses as it sounds like someone has taken a big breath of Helium before singing those. And maybe this is the case? Maybe they hired Norman Lockyer to come from his grave and do some vocals on the album to give some extra mystical feel to the album.

You might say that the only true heavy metal is the kind of music we have on this album. With both feet on the ground, cheap, unpolished and produced on their own. But turn it around and you can see it completely different – that it’s not very good music – for the exact same reasons. I prefer music that is grand and well produced, much more than I like this kind of minimalistic straight to the point thing that Vinder plays. Think of it the same way you look at movies; the best movies is not necessarily the huge production á la Avatar that looks gorgeous and is a technical masterpiece, but it sure is much nicer to look at a movie like that than to see a movie with shaky hand cameras and bad editing and terrible special effects, topped with so-so actor performances regardless how great the story and all those things are in such a movie. Which is kind of the story with Vinder – they are the handy-cam production that feels like it would be terrific with James Cameron and a billion dollar budget, but ends up like fragments of what it could have been because of the fragmented budget compared to that. Ambitious but rubbish.

The way I see it, Vincent O’Leary is an amateurish product that feels made by a group of people desperately trying to separate themselves from most other bands. The problem is that it just feels as something that sounds the way it sounds because they couldn’t afford anything better, or had the qualifications to do so – not because they wanted it to sound like this. But who knows, not everyone reason the way I do and even though I see it as a mediocre result that needs a miracle to fulfil its true potential, that’s clearly something you can find in ’Vertigo – The Story of Vincent O´Leary’ and Vinder. Potential. Despite it lies hidden deep under violet and purple pages. Approved, but only just. I can’t see myself have the patience to stand this in the long runs and neither can you.

(The video below was chosen because of Vinders drummer playing in Sinner on that tune)

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Vinder Vertigo – The Story of Vincent O´Leary

Vinder
Vertigo – The Story of Vincent O´Leary