aaamusic | On 21, Jun 2010

Sound Of Guns are the latest in a suddenly flourishing lineage of bands that sound a bit like that. As in, what if we put The Killers in a room with Coldplay. Their debut album, ‘What Came From Fire’, delivers just that by the spadeful.

After a brief intro track, we are thrown right into the deep end of sound with the sonic outburst that marks the single ‘Architects’, a purpose-written anthem. You can always tell when a band was sitting writing their anthem song, and this is it. Shining-eyed and catchy, all the ingredients are here, but as a result, it feels a little soulless and generic.

In fact, this is my main gripe with the band because once we get past that track, there are in fact some promising signs here. The lyrics can veer into the territory of eloquent and even touching, and the musicianship, while perhaps a bit superficial, is good. ‘106 (Still The Words)’ has decent melodic guitar interplay, similar with ‘Lightspeed’, but by the time this happened, it was all a bit too late for my attention.

The case seems to be that the good tracks are buried in the middle. ‘My White Noise’ is an outburst of surprising passion that valiantly fights the moments of blandness that blight this album.

It may be a matter of personal opinion, but the vocal style here grates on me, being a little robotic, especially earlier on. And to an extent, the style in general is wearing. It is the kind of indie rock/pop that is largely geared towards singles, and so listening to an entire album in order gets tiring, as there is little in the way of flow. As a collection, the songs erratically skip from one to another without a sense of progression or pacing to keep the listener.

The thing is, that I can’t help but feel that despite a few welcome quirks here and there, listening to ‘What Came From Fire’ in its entirety is difficult because after four tracks, you get déjà entendu. They are writing similar songs, and other people are too. There’s nothing to repel listeners here, but then again, there’s not a huge amount to captivate them either.

Author: Katie H-Halinski