Artist: Flyspoon
Label: ZARŠ Records
Released: 2012
Length: 26:42
Rating: 3.5/5
Fusion is a beautiful thing, contagious and shocking. In every shape and form of music. When it comes to »warping« metal, the ones who burned brightest in the early nineties, in terms of avant-garde spirit (and commercial success too, since back then the industry still knew how to reward the insight of musical genius), were the bands that could deliver their musical character in a way that drew in crowds who loved not just metal but also the alternative sounds of punk rock and post punk. From the grunge bands to Faith No More, Living Colour, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Incubus, Korn, Rage Against The Machine, and the list is far from over from there.
Flyspoon are modern metal horsemen from the Celje area, and they’re special, which is why the »alternative« prefix is a must. Two years ago the band squeezed out a bundle of demo recordings, »Flyspoon«, still with Jani Premužič on vocals. Anyone who happened to catch one of the band’s early gigs was already pleasantly shocked back then and »shot« straight through both ear canals, what with all that stage voltage and playing tenacity, as well as the freshness the band’s original music was radiating right from the start.
The EP »Run. Road. Alternation.«, just under 26 minutes long and released under the wing of Založba Radia Študent, is the band’s first real official studio document. It’s made up entirely of different songs than the demo »Flyspoon« from 2010, which hints at several possible scenarios that played out behind the scenes before the EP came out. One is that the band is deliberately saving the demo material for their first proper studio album (which only makes sense if that material is upgraded in the arrangements and more mature than the originals on the demo), or else that they never intend to use that demo material again at all. Two extremes of the same story, then.
Anyway, the guys solved the main problem more than successfully, bringing into their ranks a new singer with a highly compatible and sought-after voice, tailor-made for the band’s musical and developmental direction. Filling the gap left by the departure of the charismatic vocalist Jani Premužič is anything but easy, yet the new member and vocalist Dejan Bogomolec proves, above all through the variability of his vocal delivery and »big, solid balls firing ammo from full magazines, which means he’s got plenty of self-confidence and the required »conducting« chops, that he ranks among the more interesting singers of the new-wave alt metal generation.
A fusion built on the foundations of the past work of grunge heavyweights Alice In Chains and, in part, Pearl Jam (the verse melody and vocal tone in Through Our Hands, the shorter acoustic ballad Down the Line) and funky metal of the Incubus kind gravitates toward a harder-to-pin-down musical conglomerate, which gives Flyspoon an elementary starting point for recognizability and uniqueness.
So that means the band, right in the cradle of its birth, has settled onto the right developmental tracks of healthy artistic maturing. In Slovenia there’s no band in the alt metal vein that’s close to them in expression. There may be distant flashes of bands like Low Peak Charlie, Spleen, and/or Obduction, but in that respect you’d sooner associate Flyspoon with Croatia’s Father.
Adding to the Incubus feel of melody and groove is the vocal phenomenon that is Dejan Bogomolec, who has a masterful knack for switching between many faces of vocal delivery. From clean, melodically »level« but catchy melodies to schizoid, frenetic, almost »baboon-like« outbursts of unbridled screaming that spew rage at full lung capacity. A sudden twist of atmosphere like that works wonderfully, since in a hyperplasia of shock it keeps the listener constantly in check, held tight, that is, and brings an extremely dynamic course of events to this EP. The similarity of the solutions in the pre-chorus of Animal Bites to the Rage Against The Macihne classic Killing In the Name Of is purely coincidental, yet in the arrangement of the song it’s strongly, contrastingly compatible, and the RATM gag is dropped at once after the song reaches its climax in the melodically fulfilled chorus, opened by the line »See me as I am….« Just like Selling Lies, Animal Bite confirms that the band has an excellent sense for compact song arrangements that go for effective build-ups of mood, pulling the listener into full »groove« in the choruses.
The band was taken in hand by the seasoned Peter Dekleva (Srečna Mladina, Adam, DMP, Katarina Avbar,…). Even the opening »sample« of the opener Selling Lies could well be his »brainchild«. The instrumental middle parts of some songs also smell of Peter Dekleva’s style, like the space filled with schizoid yet organically seasoned guitar »solos«, or the use of sample loops (delay effects with »faces« of expressive minimalism) meant to fill the vast space that the »groove« mass provides. If not sooner, you’ll be led into this element of sound culture on this EP by the last, markedly experimental Hoscotch, which at the same time suggests the band could develop in the future toward even greater flexibility in combining multilayered musical spheres than this EP offers.
The EP points to the band’s exceptional talent, which in its very first career steps already communes with an element of exceptional freshness and the insightful character of full-blooded arrangement that alternative metal can serve up today, in Slovenia especially. A hugely varied and challenging piece of work, then. With excellent production, through which even the perfectionist Peter Dekleva became, for the time being, the »new sixth member«, which nonetheless suggests that Flyspoon’s music could take even more wound-up riff-based sonic masses, more contrasting of building blocks, and a deepening of the »groove« element.
Basically simple riff-based walls of sound leave the rhythm section a huge amount of room to implant groove funk elements, even experimental jazz ingredients. The band is already using this successfully, and in the future it can liven up and fill this space even more. One wonders how much of this full-bloodedness the sonic picture of this EP would have gotten without the help of the »magic hand« of the musical mastermind and great visionary Peter Dekleva.
»Ruin. Road. Alternation« is a document that grabs the listener by the ears at once and won’t let go of its »claws«, and that’s the essential thing. It sounds modern, it sounds polished, it sounds provocative and exploratory, and it offers a whole load of developmental options the band can reach for in the future. Let’s hope the insight of the band’s musical talent, served up like this, finds suitable recapitalization on a first proper studio album, and that the band might also manage a commercial breakthrough abroad. In stylistic and sonic terms, moments of the EP »Ruin. Road. Alternation.« (led here by the contagious, ultra-melodic pop punk sentiment of the chorus of Remember Your Name) could easily handle even the land of corporations, the land of MTV, that is.
Lineup
Dejan Bogomolec – vocals
Jaka Strojanšek – guitar
Jernej Hribernik – guitar
Matic Strojanšek – bass guitar
Miha Narobe – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Peter Dekleva – additional instruments
Production
Peter Dekleva & Flyspoon
Track list
1. Selling Lies
2. Animal Bite
3. Remember Your Name
4. Through Our Hands
5. Down the Line
6. Hopscotch
