Artist: Rock Shock
Label: Self-released
Released: 2009
Length: 36:48
Rating: 2.5/5
The Slovenian quintet Rock Shock carries on the modern-day tradition of Slovenia’s eighties hard rock bands. The type of songs, as well as the way the studio sound is shaped, will sell you on that in a heartbeat. With their debut, the guys offer a glimpse of their own potential, along with some unmistakable signs of a hefty dose of beginner’s naivety, or really, the occasional loss of true orientation on the solid road to the goal (read: following their own musical direction).
The songwriting approach sometimes tugs hard toward flirting with the style of acts like Mary Rose (Glej me v oči, then Ne poznam te, and especially the song Igra), the mellowed-out romantic Vili Resnik in his Pop Design days (Vračam spomine) or Shank Rock (the chorus of Ti ne veš, the chorus of Gremo na pir).
The production is one-dimensional and hits you instantly with the sound of Slovenian rock, or eighties pop rock mainstream. As such, it pays too little attention to spotlighting the individual building blocks of the music (keyboards, guitar riffs, guitar transitions – single-line decorative melodic motifs) at the points where they take the lead in the basic motifs, which is a big minus when it comes to building the album’s dynamics, or achieving an undulating, varied sound. This also leaves the production deeply in debt when it comes to bringing out the drama of the moment in certain parts of songs, where that could definitely have been developed. Despite the basic variety of the songs, the studio treatment of the sound doesn’t follow suit, so the musical potential of the band’s vocabulary remains less than optimally exploited in the studio. For 2009, that’s a big debt, and honestly, a shame.
Of course this also raises the question of what the band actually wanted, and what was going on with the working chemistry in the studio. It’s entirely realistic to think the guys got along great and had a superb feel for everything while they were in the studio. But the finished product reflects a somewhat different picture. It can often go the other way, too. The vibe in the studio is awful, and the album brings you glory because the music-loving masses perceive it completely differently than the artist does. But these are just musings, musings that will, I hope, make it easier to explain some of the facts that follow in this analysis.
The guys prove they’re excellent musicians and that they’re talented. Some parts of the album show the band’s big potential. I’ll start with the most valuable bits of this album. The chorus of Zdaj letim is so melodic and compact, so fully realized, that even bigger AOR/melodic hard rock outfits around the planet wouldn’t be ashamed of it. But heard as a whole, from head to tail, it gets watered down. This is the opening track, and it lacks a stretched-out intro that lures the listener in the way the scent of an orchid’s nectar lures a greedy bumblebee. The song starts abruptly. The lead riff hits right away and the vocals kick in after a few seconds. A track like this would have communicated much better if it had been placed at the very end of the tracklist. The end of an album needs intensity too. The song is bold, polished, and intense enough. As such, it stands out in terms of quality on the album. Sadly, though, it comes across as a version that would be easier to understand if it carried the suffix “radio edit”. In other words, it lacks the gradual build-up of atmosphere that every modern rock album opener demands. Even the intro of the song Heroj, driven by an eighties keyboard sound, offers a hint of how the guys might have approached the intro of the album’s opening track.
Heroj is also a moment on the album that stands out in terms of quality. Here the band managed to neatly combine the pre-chorus and chorus with all the transitional parts. The song delivers a dramatic build-up that peaks in the chorus, especially thanks to a very well-judged bridge (three lines in a row, starting with the line: “Hočeš, da te vzamem…”). Alongside Zdaj letim, it’s worth considering when picking candidates for a Rock Shock single. Another great moment on the album is the chorus of Glej me v oči, where a bit more of the guitar’s noisy, riff-driven resurgence is a very important ingredient. Čakam te also shows the band’s big potential. It’s a mid-tempo track where the band boldly worked in the sound of a classical piano, which then gives way to a more rock-oriented dose of distorted guitar noise in the chorus. It’s built up, and it keeps that sense of melodic compactness between the pre-chorus and the chorus. Then there’s Ne poznam te, which develops convincingly in the spirit of drama theater, and the band successfully repeats the attributes described in the previous sentence.
The rest of the album lags behind a bit. The closing stretch in particular is short on punch. The ballad Hladna, followed by the sped-up Druga stran, or Gremo na pir, get lost in genericness and the search for their own identity. It feels like grabbing a handful of sand that pours out through your fist. It’s hard to pin down the essence of these songs. Gremo na pir promises much more in the pre-chorus than the naive chorus later delivers, which completely degrades the song in terms of quality and reminds you that this is just another album by “Euro-sub-Alpine” types who can’t be bothered to move their ambitions out of the promised land of mainstream in the unique Slovenian rock oasis. That moment exposes the band’s two faces. One has the potential to reap much more; the other just wants to please a patch of a few square kilometers of the European continent. That’s also why the lyrics are written in Slovenian, which further keeps the melodies of these compactly crafted songs from being maximally exploited or showcased. There’s a hole in the backing vocals, too. Especially the rock-forward choruses desperately need that extra layer arranged more concretely than this release offers. Matej Zalar’s excellent vocals are the element that keeps the album on its feet throughout. His vocal expression and expressive power could definitely have been used much better if he’d sung in English and had more support from better studio-“cut” backing vocals.
Besides the weaker ending of the album, we run into moments like Ti ne veš or Vračam spomine, where it’s even easier to feel that the band still doesn’t know exactly what it wants. Does it want to cater to a general feeling of pleasing the Slovenian critical mass, effectively holding back from unleashing all the power that youthful rock rebelliousness should dictate, and that might have carried them abroad? Like I said. Rock Shock have the potential for that. But they hold back. Carefully. For whom? Ultimately, for themselves. The results fit accordingly. The leaden days are long behind us, when bands were happy just to buy cheap knockoffs of the big world-brand instruments. I believe Rock Shock don’t deserve this artificial restraint, this boxing themselves in, this limiting of their musical expression. Just like the band’s name says. The rock of dilettantism, arrogance, and not swearing allegiance to every last compromise should be erupting out of them.
Whether they’ll step into full-on pop, pop for lighter-leaning guitars, or let the beast off the leash and throw themselves into the true sphere of melodic hard rock or AOR rock, is their call. I believe the latter is the right path for the band. You’ve got nothing to lose and a lot to gain. If they choose that direction, they need to storm abroad, look for better conditions to shape their studio sound, think about changing a name that’s currently easy to mix up with Šank rock, build a naughtier “bad boys” look, and so on… If they go for the first direction, they’ve pretty much already told the whole story with their debut. Pop or rock, guys? Decide as soon as possible.
Lineup
Matej Zalar – vocals
Janko Tomšič – guitar
Andrej Rovan – keyboards
Marko Turk – bass guitar
Aleš Mekinda – drums
GUEST:
Tanja Veselič – backing vocals
Production
Toni Jurij
Track list
1. Zdaj letim
2. Ti ne veš
3. Heroj
4. Glej me v oči
5. Vračam spomine
6. Čakam te
7. Igra
8. Ne poznam te
9. Hladna
10. Druga stran
11. Gremo na pir
