|
‘Hard To The Beat’ ZAR |
|
Line-Up: ANDRE SAUBER - lead vocals It is evident from opening track CRYIN FOR LOVE that Zar have started this album with the wrong song. The song contains a heavy intro but is disappointingly weak thereafter and is not the ideal track to start an album with as it fails to attract the listener to keep on listening. NEVER SO ALONE’s most noticeable quality is its superb, catchy chorus. It is a much better offering than the opening track and is a powerful song that hits the listener with pure emotion. HARD TO THE BEAT – as the name suggests – is a very upbeat song. It is distinctly lacking in power although it contains a very raw sound, especially the solo. This is an up and down song that can sound powerful at times but weak at other times. This lack of consistency makes this a very difficult song to listen to. HUNDRED RIVERS – Melodic acoustic ballad. Has a more natural feel to it and is very easy to listen to. PERFECT DAY is a song that continually stops and starts. Like HARD TO THE BEAT it can be powerful but more often than not it fails to capitalise on its powerful moments by bringing them back down to earth with a weaker area of the song, in this case the somewhat repetitive chorus. VISIONS is another annoyingly inconsistent track that Zar let themselves down with. Whether it is an inability to sound consistently heavy or just unwillingness, it is once again evident on this track that the band fail to successfully combine slow and heavy sounds into one track. WAITING FOR THE STORM is similar to HUNDRED RIVERS in that it is a relaxing piece of music that sounds a lot more natural than many of the other songs on the album. The song seems to flow like it is writing itself and this can only be a good thing for the band, as this song is a rare high point of the album. EVOLUTION is a much better offering as it is the first track where Zar successfully combine slow and heavy styles in the same song. The chorus is a little weak but the powerful riffs and the excellent classic solos more than make up for this. NI-TEN simply begs the question ‘why couldn’t all the songs be this consistently rocking?’ A 3 minute instrumental of heavy metal proportions makes for a superb and memorable offering. LIVING FOR THE CITY brings the album back down to earth as it returns to the inconsistency of the opening tracks. It is a stop/start track that reaches a peak then tails off dramatically before going some way to repairing the damage at the end of the song just when it’s too late. WHY DON’T YOU TALK TO ME is another ballad that proves Zar are distinctly better at writing more melodic music than trying to be a heavy band. SCHIZOPHRENIA is an acoustic song that fails to take off and leaves the listener craving a more memorable closing track.
In all honesty ‘Hard To The Beat’ could be a much better album but will still appeal to any music listeners who enjoy a melodic and relaxing feel as tracks such as HUNDRED RIVERS, WAITING FOR THE STORM and WHY DON’T YOU TALK TO ME are very well written songs. The downfall for Zar is that they unsuccessfully move between genres and the transition from slow to heavy does not work for most of their songs. Despite this, the album is definitely worth a listen as the music is very will written despite not sounding quite right in the style that Zar are trying to write in. It sounds very experimental at times but on the occasions that the band get it right they will blow the listener away with the power of their music. Released by MTM Music: 0681-70
|
