Sittin' Idol - Sittin' Idol (Demo)
Self-Financed
Thrash / Grunge Metal and Hard Rock
8 songs (42'54)
Release year: 2001
Sittin' Idol
Reviewed by Marty
Sittin' Idol hails from Calgary, Alberta Canada and have been a band since 1997. They've had some local success in "Battle Of The Bands" competitions and this, their demo CD from 2001, resulted in them being named as the #2 Best Unsigned Band by the magazine Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles for the year 2002. This album is totally self-financed and self-recorded with the band building a basement studio themselves just to record with. Guitarist Rick Hatch also doubles as producer and sound engineer for the band. Rounding out the line-up for Sittin' Idol are Chris Hansen, bass (not with the band anymore), Scott Lennox, vocals, guitar and a guy known only as "Stu" on drums.

From the Pink Floyd style psychedelic bass intro to the instrumental opener, Idolatry (Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun anyone?), the song kicks into gear with some Slayer, Megadeth flavored riffing which has a great old school thrash sound to it. The rest of the album moves between more aggressive older Metallica styled tracks, with songs like Conformist Wine and Turning Point (with vocalist Scott Lennox sounding like a younger and angrier James Hetfield) to more slower and pounding heavy doom styles with a little of the classic Alice In Chains sound thrown in. Other comparisons could be made to bands like Tool and Corrosion Of Conformity. A few tracks have some great old Sabbath style sudden tempo changes and very few of the tracks stick to one tempo for the duration. The more reckless sounding style to some of their songs recalls the vintage Anthrax days of the mid 80's. Mission sees the band using pounding heavy riffs with stops accompanied by harmonic squeals that is vintage 90's grunge metal. Using more abstract riffing, atmospheric interludes and a sudden change to a reckless fast tempo, this one also has Alice In Chains influences. In keeping with that aspect, Suncatcher has the Layne Staley (Alice In Chains) styled of layered and very emotional vocals and alternates between heavy and quiet segments and bears some Sabbath influences. Amends, with it's eerie and soulful vocal accompanying acoustic guitar really has the classic Layne Staley sound and reminds me of the song River Of Deceit from the Mad Season album. It builds and gets heavier and has the same haunting vocal that Lane used to do. I got chills listening to this one as he really captures the soul and spirit of that vocal style that many thought died along with the Alice In Chains frontman several years ago.

For literally a basement recording, this is pretty good. Several tracks have a somewhat weaker production than the rest and the band manages to capture the more quieter acoustic and mellower sections with crystalline clarity, good stereo separation and some good delay effects. It's when the band cranks it up that the production suffers a bit. I really enjoyed this album. It has a great mix of chunky and fast thrash metal styles, more slower doom styles, a sense of aggression and passion at the same time and some great vocals by Scott. I really like the almost psychedelic edge and the Alice In Chains influence as well. It seems like the band has thrown everything they've ever written (up to that point) onto this CD as the styles vary a lot. It's going to be interesting to see how the band evolves from this and seeing that this CD is going on 3 years old, it makes me wonder what they have in the can for their next recording. I'd love to hear more from these guys but it would probably take an interest from a label to push it forward...let's hope so! Great work guys!!

Killing Songs :
Idolatry, Conformist Wine, Turning Point, Suncatcher and Amends
Marty quoted 76 / 100
0 readers voted
Average:
 0
You did not vote yet.
Vote now

There are no replies yet to this review
Be the first one to post a reply!