Tuesday, September 18, 2012

FIRE ON DAWSON: "Seven Billion and a Nameless Somebody"

Rating: RRR
Label: FOD 2012
Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

Listening to Fire On Dawson, it's too easy to think of other German Rock/Prog acts throughout history and time in a sort of desperate attempt to draw similarities and/or influences. But then again, it's all too easy to gather acts under the same banner simply because they're from a particular part of this world. Or, more to the point, I never would have guessed Germany in the first place. However, they're from Karlsruhe, Germany, formed in 2006. The current line-up consists of founder and bassist Martin Sonntag, guitarist Markus Stricker and Indian vocalist Ankur Batra.

"Seven Billion and a Nameless Somebody" is their second full length album. Recorded and mixed in the band's own studio and later sent across the pond to Hollywood, US of A to be mastered by multiple award winning sound engineer Stephen Marsh (Incubus, Korn, The Hangover). They're a Progressive Rock band according to the press-release (and according to themselves?), however, don't go thinking Genesis, Rush, or any other old-geezers act of the seventies.

Fire On Dawson are certainly not stuck in yesteryear sound or production and have just as much in common with Korn and U.S. contemporary metal as Progressive rock. In fact, I know that a lot of old-skool folks wouldn't even consider this as proper "prog" at all really. The style has usually been described as alternative rock or post grunge with progressive influences rather than all out progressive rock. File this under modern math metal with intricate timing patterns and rhythm changes and you need to enjoy both the aggressive prog and modern metal to get all the benifits with Fire On Dawson. Nice but no cigar.
www.fireondawson.com

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