Dan's been following me for years now, since my days on Soundclick and the fledgling days of myspace(remember that shit?..lol). Anyway, I'm all about giving everyone a voice and Dan was gracious enough to speak his piece on our first effort.
THOSE WHO ARE ON OUR EMAIL LIST WILL BE RECEIVING A FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE ALBUM THE FIRST WEEK OF APRIL BEFORE IT HITS ITUNES.
As of now we're taking care of the album art and the rest of the yadda yaddas.
Without further chit chat...here's the first official review.
Silent Disorder
Everything Burns EP
review by Daniel DeMersseman
Anyone else remember Soundclick? Before Fokissed? Does anyone even remember Fokissed? Or Soundclick, for that matter? I guess some things are best forgotten? Probably so. But even the desert supports life. That's where I first ran into Heron DeMarco 4 years ago when he released Mutiny.
Back then, he was hungry and thirsty but mired in hardcore rap posturing, boxing invisible foes (among them, the goliath music industry which currently eats its own fecal matter for survival and clearly doesn’t need his or any of our help to off itself).
But if you heard Mutiny’s final track Fire Flies, you immediately knew Heron had it in him to become the hip hop lovechild of Prince and Jimi Hendrix that he is today. Today, he's the lead guitarist, keyboardist, vocalist, and front man of Silent Disorder. After Mutiny, he realized he needed a new crew—or a crew to begin with—so he recruited a talented young bassist and drummer to round out the outfit.
Their debut EP Everything Burns is neither polished perfection nor indulgent experimentation. But with a name like Everything Burns, what would you expect? Okay, maybe you'd expect hit-and-miss experimentation (though you’d expect that with any independent album), but that’s not what you’ll get. "Everything Burns" is a deconstruction and restructuring of the familiar, capturing the spirit of Nas, Canibus, Metallica, Rakim, Prince, and Hendrix in a new package.
Tumbling Down is fresh with observations on the current state of the world from economic apocalypse (“Wall Street’s lust in the mass consumption would have us broken, rusted, with motherfuckin’ nothing’“) to America's first black President ("I grew up with hood crooks that look like me, but now there's a man in office that looks like me"), perfectly framing his own mantra: "Fuck green lights. I do it now." As Heron's world—our world—has tumbled down around him, he's grown. The directionless pugilist has transformed into the leader of his own movement.
Everyone's a Criminal might be the album's most creative and experimental track, interweaving a JFK speech into an irregular drum beat and another strong guitar riff from Heron. These, the end solo, and the accompanying shuffling drums make for great music. Lyrically, the song touches on humanity's connections. Be they crook, criminal, priest, pope, or the average human being, "we're all cut from the same cloth."
When the bass first hit on Slither, it became my immediate favorite. No questions. The bass continues slowly slithering to more complex proportions in its glorious end as Heron expresses his relationship woes with friends and lovers alike: "I don't trust nothin' that breathes, moves, or pisses… It's 'where do you stand when the earth cracks beneath us?'" All of this coupled with a perfect classic metal/rock tinge keeps me playing and replaying this track.
Less Colder, the tail to Slither's head, is all love—a track for the ladies with smooth keyboards and raw-but-reassuring emotions. But unlike most love songs, it’s honest and real, examining and addressing his past inconsistencies in love.
Wolvesis a clear tribute to his Mutiny-era fans, the chorus with its M.O.P.-esque voice strains and shouts and the heavier reliance on one-liners than the album's other tracks. The distorted guitar line that slowly creeps into the triumphant chorus echoes Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. On first listen, this was my least favorite track, but the riff-age kept me coming back for more. And now, it doesn't feel right to call it my least favorite track on the album because, on any other album, it could easily be one of the stronger tracks.
Finally, we arrive at the title track Everything Burns, an introduction to a bluesier sound and the return of the keys, this time an organ. My second-favorite song, it takes me back to a better time when organic music was still king.
Silent Disorder fuses a warm, live sound with well put-together-but-not-overl
My rating: 4/5 stars
-Daniel DeMersseman
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