Faceful of Flames
Live
Faceful of Flames attracted a reasonable crowd for a wet Tuesday night and were obviously at ease on stage with plenty of playful chit-chat before songs, after songs, and when they didn’t know which song to play.
The music was a heavy rock ‘n’ roll with a pace that was slow enough to add a dark-groove to the rock riffs. The overall sound was aided by the lack of gratuitous endings and the complete absence of egotistical ten-minute solo’s.
The stand out track appeared third in their set, with a great riff pushing the track along at the trademark grind, backup up by decent vocal ideas in both the verse and chorus. Aiming for short and sweet, the song was a surprise early finisher with an ending that sprung from nowhere. If they could tighten up the exit to this song, it would be a real shiner in their armoury.
The mix of rocking material with songs that added a more haunting vocal worked well for Faceful of Flames. The vocal could easily hit the angry scale as well as the deep Goth-rock moody bits. I would have liked the bass guitar to skip down an octave as it strayed for too long in the range occupied by the vocal and guitar parts; a little de-tuning or a lower-b string would have thickened up the sound at the bottom end.
The only other gripe was that the drumming wasn’t quite gutsy enough for the songs. However, after reading that statement, the drummer will probably be angry enough to sort it out and hit everything harder (his drum kit, that is, rather than my good self!)
This wasn’t a bad effort at all. In fact, I wouldn’t mind hearing some of those songs again as they were quite catchy. When the songs are good, all the other stuff can be sorted out over time. Definitely not something I’ve seen a lot of and worth checking out if you need a change from fast paced rock.
Written by Fenton on
