The title says it all. Underpinning every spastic roar and raging riff on
Vex Red‘s debut is the burning desire to make something enormous, resonant and real.
Of course, much of this is due to the svengali-like production touch of
Ross Robinson, who scooped them up for his I Am label
on the virtue of a of a cheap demo tape last year. If there’s anyone capable of giving a band an
LA makeover and creating a bone-crushing tempest in a punily provincial
English tea-cup, it is he.
‘Start…’ has some neat turns – the spoken
samples in recent single ‘Can’t Smile’,
the way Trent Reznor doppelganger Terry Abbott’s
voice slips easily into floaty
falsetto and agonised howl, and the shifting, lava-like boil of the songs. Still,
there’s a detectable heart beating beneath them that gives them a depth many
contemporaries lack.
If Vex Red sometimes lack imagination, they more
than make up for with high-impact,
cathartic cacophony. It’s a fine place to start.
April Long