Cotton Soeterboek band-Twisted

Caf Fine records
2008

This band was formed when guitarist Alan Cotton set out to look for a singer and he landed Robert Soeterboek. They claim influence from Deep Purple, early Whitesnake and some southern rock acts as well. I would say that's a fair enough claim at least to begin describing their sound. This is blues tinged hard rock with lots of melodies and it's very smooth for the majority of the time. The band claims to be influenced by 1970's acts and I hear that in the use of the organ and the basic style. However I think they sound more like a band who took their 70's influences and filtered them through a late 80's/early 90's hard rock approach. What this means to me is they rubbed down a lot of the grit and soul and went for more accessible melodies instead. The vocals of Robert Soererboek are strong, but predictable. He can carry the tunes well, but the lack of variety in the pace of many of the tracks doesn't provide him with many chances to really show his range. The music does at times remind me of say Mark 3 era Deep Purple and pre-Slide it in Whitesnake, but unfortunately many of their best moments are brief and occur only at the start of the songs. Then the band seems to try and glide for longer than they realistically can. The result is that a bulk of several songs just fail to sustain enough energy to last the duration of the song. There is no doubt that they have some fine playing ability here and there, but for me they just lacked the punch that they really needed.