Swift - Waging War
Reviewed by grant
Sometimes, albums come along that spark interest because you think they should. In other words, no matter what the first song does to you, the full runtime is explored because of how much you heard about the band, how well you know the band, how many bands you love toured with them. It's a special case where you know more about the band before you aurally attack the CD, than most people do who owned it first. It's that special case with Swift. I've seen them live, their home sits not far from me, conversations sparked themselves with the band at times, and then the CD comes out. It requires some reworking to separate any personal connection with an album, and objectively place it's quality above or below the standard of today's rock-saturated music market. In an oversimplified nutshell, Swift rides the wave of groove metal in a tasteful way. They are talented musicians that could choose to play music that technically challenges what they do choose to play - instead, they stick with a simple style that focuses on their live crowds' head nods. For a locally produced CD, Waging War sounds fabulous. The guitars can be a little thin and too fuzzy at times, the vocals have a tendency to take over, and overall, the disc lacks a lot of the midrange that fills out a professionally mixed product. The vocals trudge over the sing/scream catagory, with lots of harmony and feel good choruses - lots of growl rap for the remainder. The main problem with Swift's Waging War is its timing. If this piece popped onto shelves about 6 years ago, it would be a hit, but like all other nü-rock, it falls victim to sounding like everything else. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with this simple album, there's not anything revolutionary about it either. Regardless, Waging War is a good CD, and fans of the groove will spin it for a while. However, it can't be distinguished from much else - other than coming straight from the soul of some tight local musicians and not from the brain of a Pro-tools driven, high dollar producer. [www.swift-band.com]