aaamusic | On 31, Oct 2011

Earth Prayer are a classic rock style aimed at the kind of people who read Classic Rock and they are about to release their debut album Nine Days.

Firstly I would like to say that fundamentally I don’t have anything against Classic Rock magazine I have even been known to read it occasion and rather enjoy it. My problem with it is it seems to think music is dead and everything after 1977 is a waste of time and it continually harks back in this nostalgia bubble to a time when rock (or should that be ‘rawk’) music was ‘real’.

Well gentle reader rock music didn’t die back then it continued on to create some great music but it seems Earth Prayer missed it. It all just sounds like something from the 70’s and not in a good way. I love the 70’s I was raised in 70’s rock and prog but this just sounds dated and tries to sound overblown but ends up sounding cheesy and like second-rate stadium rock.

Spread over eleven tracks it goes over every cliched rock riff including starting a song with a Kiss style ‘wooooo’ (don’t imitate Kiss kids even Kiss are now imitating themselves and that’s not good for anyone). Whilst there are some moments of good rock some nice riffs and instrumental parts but as soon as the strained vocals come back in sounding like someone squeezing out their emotions like someone whose emotional constipation has gone too far the whole thing is ruined.

From this you wouldn’t guess that I like classic rock and that’s not true I like(d) Jet, The Datsuns, Mooney Suzuki, Wolfmother and the like but what they had and Earth Prayer don’t is a sense of fun and whilst they referenced the classic rock bands it was an updated version and there was no pre-conception that they thought music was dead and wanted to create a Frankenstein’s monster version of those bands.

 

Barry Grey