Andensum – Lucky Witness
Crash Records – A001A – 02.04.07
By Anna Novitzky
Nostalgia is a peculiar beast. Newly legal teenagers and dying-breath OAPs alike lust after the glory days of their forgotten youth, when everyone was nice to old people, politicians cared about people not cash, and you could get a quarter of sweets and a sticky bun for sixpence and still have change left for fish and chips. However, when actually confronted with the reality of the time, they often find that it wasn’t all they’d cracked it up to be. This brings me to
Andensum.
Press play on
Lucky Witness, and one is immediately transported back to the heady days of the late 90s and early 2000s, the time when hoodies were worn by metallers rather than chavs and, most importantly, Papa Roach was on the radio. For the Oxfordshire six-piece’s debut album resembles nothing so much as the angsty, stomp-ridden nu-metal of those years, only without the rapping. The straightforward heavy rock guitar, stop-start rhythms and shout/sing vocals are hauntingly, if not depressingly, familiar, and experimentation and surprises are nowhere to be found.
That said, there’s a lot worse than this about. The band play proficiently and know how to put a song together, and if their proud claims to be influenced by System of a Down and Killswitch Engage are anything to go by, achieve what they set out to do admirably. It’s just that all the songs tend to merge into one. Still, at half an hour long it’s a decent, inoffensive trip down memory lane, and it’s a much better 90s revival than some I could mention – Noel Edmonds’ career, anyone?
6/10
Official Andensum Website
Offical Crash Records Website
