At first glance, the artwork on the front of Black Water Rising’s self-titled debut album looks dark and ominous.
In the center is the skull of a bull of some sort, with long horns, long hair, cables and motorcycle exhaust pipes all bursting out of the sides of it.
At the top of the snout, between the eyes of the skull, rages a fire that burns from blue at the bottom to yellow and orange at the top, nearly leaping off the case.
Black Water Rising is a four-piece band that hails from Brooklyn, N.Y. Upon first listening to the album, the listener immediately realizes that these guys can rock, hard. Which makes sense, considering their MySpace page indicates their genre of music to be hard rock and metal.
The songwriting in the band is very much politically oriented and also draws images of issues with society. Producer, guitarist, vocalist, chief songwriter and band leader Rob Traynor delivers his vocals very raw and with a ton of angst. However, he often comes off sounding like another version of Chad Krueger from Nickelback. Highlights include the songs “Brother Go On” and “The River.”
Lyrics like “Just a number and slave, from the womb to the grave” convey the message the group is delivering about the government. The group is not necessarily anti-establishment, just against the establishment America currently promotes.
An example comes from the song, “Brother Go On,” whose lyrics read, “See the man with the current plan, well he don’t understand the working man. He will claim he can feel your pain and he will promise gain but he’s the only one gaining. I think it’s time to dispose of the leaders we’ve chose[n], seems the enemy lies within.”
The guitars generally deliver powerful, heavy riffs that lead into bursting, light-speed solos from both guitarists, Johnny Fattoruso and Traynor. The guitar licks are metal in nature but have heavy laden roots in the grunge world, feeling very reminiscent of bands such as Alice in Chains. The guitarists seem to blend the styles together with ease, with highlights being “No Halos” and “Rise.”
The bass is rather quiet and overshadowed by the heavy guitars, but can still be felt very well. Oddie McLaughlin, bassist, and Mike Meselsohn, drummer, form the rhythm section and provide some pretty hard-hitting grooves as the basis for many of the songs, the best of which being the opening track, “The Mirror.”
The album is well worth the price if one is a fan of grunge, hard rock or American metal.
Compared to most of today’s mainstream music, it is a relieving spark of ingenuity, an old sound with a new polish.
However, it does drag on a little at times and some of the songs start to sound alike after a few listens.