GRAVITY KILLS — Superstarved* (review)

GRAVITY KILLS — Superstarved* album cover Album · 2002 · Industrial Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Vim Fuego
No fucking about. This band sounds like a less chaotic Ministry, a more male Marilyn Manson, or Rob Zombie after he's had a shower.

It's a much trodden path now. Fairly standard energetic hard rock with samples, beats, distorted voices, like Filter, or straightforward Nine Inch Nails. It all has an air of utter predictability about it: quiet start with an electronic beat, breathy vocals, and then the main riff starts, with such utter regularity you can set your watch by it. Then the songs progress through variations on these dynamics - noisy bit, quiet bit with bleepy noises, shouty chorus, noisy bit, fade out with more electro-noises.

This description makes this album sound like a nasty cliched pile of shit. It isn't. The bass lines are reminiscent of "Rude Awakening"-era Prong, and the vocals take cues from Al Jourgenson, Rob Zombie and even Alice Cooper. Gravity Kills have a very good ear for melody, hooks, riffs, and some downright good songwriting. Sure, little new ground is broken, but so what? These guys aren't innovators, but they're certainly not imitators either. A band doesn't need to be innovative if they do what they do well - it never hurt AC/DC.

Many of the tracks here sound like they're aimed at rock radio stations. Opener "Love, Sex and Money" would make a great single. But then so would the second, third, fourth and twelfth tracks. The Depeche Mode cover "Personal Jesus" stands out above the rest, taking an acoustic guitar intro, giving it an electro-stutter, and then jumping in with a Manson-esque footstomping beat, producing a simple, catchy and highly effective song.

It would be great to see the likes of this band, who can actually write songs and play, taking the place of boy bands with guitars on rock radio and in the charts. If given the right push, this band could have been huge.
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