Mindbreaker-s/t

Self-produced
2009



This band hails from Easton, Pennsylvania and includes a number of veteran musicians in their ranks. The first thing I noticed about this disc is that the production is sorely lacking. The sound starts out very muddy and dull. It does get better particularly for the guitars, but the vocals often sound like they are being sung into a can and the drums lack the punch they need. However the sound does get a little better as the album goes on, but I think that is just due to the band stepping up the pace. After one play I knew that I had to push past the production shortcomings and see what was going on with the music that I could hear. Even then it was tough at first to really figure out what this band was doing. They have a short intro and then "Never needed" comes on and it sounds very underdone like they just knocked it out right then and there and didn't work anything out. "Orchestrated Commodity" follows and it's in the same style in that it is fuzzy and wanders around a lot. It's kind of loud, but nothing is ever distinct enough to make much of an impression. The next song is "All the same" which fortunately goes against it's name and finally this band sounds like they are putting some pieces in place. The main riff is simple, but driving. It's the best part of the song, but it does make an enough of an impression to get my attention with it's Judas Priest meets Accept approach. The vocals improve here and begin to solidify a style of some sort, but it's still streaky. After this the album fortunately never dips down to the quality of those two horribly raw songs although they never quite get everything on the same page either. The guitars might be the most consistent part of this album, but they still struggle to keep it together. The vocals show some promise, but it's normally only in bits and pieces. There is not one whole song where they really have everything. They really desperately need a better production job the next time around. They also need a lot of tightening around the edges as well. I hear a few decent riffs some potentially decent vocals, there is a whole clean-up and re-writing that needs to be done before I can really say this is a band worth checking out.


www.myspace.com/mindbreakerrocks