Michael Clark reviews Flood of Red’s debut album
Rating: 5/5
Leaving Everything Behind is the debut album from Flood of Red, an up and coming six-piece band from Airdrie, Scotland. The album begins with a song entitled The Edge of the World (Prelude) which sees a quiet, careful opening interrupted by a thrashing transition to The Harmony, where the band’s hardcore roots fall more into focus. Flood of Red has hardcore and emo influences, with much of their earlier material featuring screaming and what you might call high-speed-double-bass-pedal-angst-tunes. It’s an entirely different sound, but nowadays, far from spilling into adolescent whines, tracks like Little Lovers and Like Elephants thrust the listener into a haze of distortion that echoes and splits and changes but always takes you somewhere you weren’t expecting.
This is layered rock without going overboard. No epic Coldplay strings, no rousing choruses, no gang vocals. Rather the sentiments of the songs are expressed in swelling riffs and conjoined echoes so powerful that your speakers can hardly handle them and you can’t help but feel you’re committing a terrible injustice by not getting on your feet and head banging wildly.
And it works so well. I’m not trying to be cool by liking a band you probably don’t know. After all, I wrote at length about my near-nausea-inducing love for Lady Gaga last issue. No, Flood of Red is just brilliant despite being largely unheard of. You hear phrases like “stripped down” and “raw” to describe unsigned singer–songwriters as if their choice to not make the effort to form a band is something to be applauded, when it’s not really, is it? If I wanted to hear you snivel over your ex-girlfriend for three and a half minutes I’d spend the necessary £7 to get you rat-arsed on Tesco value vodka before I spent any more to hear a sizeable audience congratulate you for having a crushingly unoriginal life story.
Michael Clark
Flood of Red playing unreleased track ‘Whispers and Choirs’ from a recent session with Sitcom Soldiers.
Image credit - Flood of Red.
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Such a genuine, talented group of guys!
Everyone working for “Flood of Red” group is bunch of very talented guys! Their new released album is great. I wish them all the best for their debut album. Thanks
I saw and listened “Flood of Red” wonderful songs and they were very futile and heartbreaking. The quality of their voices were smoothly vague which is very wonderful to listen. You can hear them at youtube if you aren’t satisfied with my description.