NitroVolt
Dirty Wings

German quartet NitroVolt are flying on dirty wings, flying towards success and recognition perhaps. Compared with the likes of Speedealer and Airbourne one is bound to think of speedy punkish rock music and looking at the cover art it is likely to think that as well, it is not a particularly attractive artwork. This is their second album, following their debut that was released in 2011, the band was formed a few years before that and has changed a few members along the way. Funny thing is that now they have managed to find a complete line-up where everyone in the group has a name with Nitro in it somewhere – isn’t that a lucky coincident? Kind of like The Ramones I suppose.

Musically it is simplistic high-energy rock music that is performed in a furious tempo without really slowing down. Quite modern sound, no strangeties or clever ideas just pure and simple, straight to the point, rock music. The production is modern yet what you can expect from a band with in this kind of genre, same goes for the vocalist, I would say that it is punkish, speedy hard rock with plenty of energy for the one who wants some kind of genre based description. When you hear the first song it is quite easy to guess what the album will offer in terms of musical content. Not a very long album with a playing time of just 32 minutes over thirteen tracks, and the variation is what you can expect from an album of this kind – there is some variation but not a massive amount. The short playing time should help avoid the album feeling too repetitive.

It is a fairly good album I would say, the energy is great, the tempo is intense and the songs are fairly good. There is this risk of the album beginning to feel repetitive quite soon as the variation isn’t the greatest and there is no feeling of novelty here. It probably works very well on the stage; it is that kind of music that would probably be enjoyable with a decent stage show even if you haven’t heard the band before. On record it feels more like something you fill out the background with if you are working in the garage with your old car or something like that – and as I don’t have an old car I cannot really relate to that. Thing is though that I am probably not the audience intended for music like this and fans of the similar bands or punk rock as well as some hardcore should like it a lot more than I do.

To me this is one of those albums that are too good to be bad and too bad to be really good, a perfect album for our middle rating. The songs are all catchy and good but none of them stands out in such a way that you stop and take notice, and that is the story for the album; it is okay but it never really takes flight and in the end you haven’t really paid that much attention to it.

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