Unique, all-instrumental hard-rock from Cleveland, Ohio

9 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Instrumental Rock, METAL: Progressive Metal



Details:
There are basically two sorts of music devotees: those who enjoy dissecting songs in a search for complex meaning in the lyrics and those who want to just let the music wash over them and take them where it may. Instrumentals, therefore, only hold any appeal for one of those groups. What does that mean to a band that creates only instrumental music? Not much for And Say We Did, who mastered the art of allowing to music itself to speak loudly and proudly with its own voice, a voice that rings out throughout Final Demonstration.âDietissâ opens the disc with a solid Meshuggah vibe that is only slightly reined in by a lighter high end, in the style of Rush. This is the basic formula for the rest of the tracks on the disc, with grand openings settling into subtler riffs only to build as the track progresses to its climax. Thereâs a constant mix of heaviness and lightness as well as subtlety and power that keeps each song vibrant and new.

âGreen Stickâ, in particular, follows the formula while changing things up a bit by adding just a taste of some of the frenetic pacing and composition that one would expect out of Primus to the mix.

âLame Gullâ mixes in a bit more of an old Genesis sound and is the first track to show any signs of slipping into the one pitfall that tends to plague instrumentals: it gets a bit long and, with only a riff and no lyrics, a bit redundant. If anything, though, it is a testament to the band that on a disc comprised entirely of instrumentals this is the only track that really suffers from that.

âJungle Thingâ stands out from the pack, though, with its charming bluesy classic rock hybrid sound, putting the listener vaguely in mind of some of Tangerine Dreamâs material.

Many people missed out on their chance to see And Say We Did playing out on the Cleveland local scene, but fans of real, live, pure, unadulterated music should definitely check out this Final Demonstration of the bandâs skills.

LarryMac
larrymac@domaincleveland.com