Order of Voices - Self Titled (2/5)

01. For Me 05:38 02. Burn Black Light 04:59 03. Reaching Down 06:20 04. What I Breathe 04:49 05. Forgiveness 03:38 06. Don’t Falter 06:17 07. Then Fall 05:39 08. Into The Ocean 03:14

A cursory squint at their Myspace reveals that Order of Voices state their intention to exist somewhere in the region of the cutting edge of British alternative rock. At present, it’s true that this edge isn’t particularly sharp, and has seen far more cutting days, but Order of Voices are seeking to change this; an ambitious goal, to say the least, but ambition is one of the band’s strong suits.

What Order of Voices provide is an epic sound, layer upon layer of melodies. They specialise in having a melodic chorus soaring over heavily distorted mid-tempo riffs. It’s very slickly performed and produced, the various guitar melodies slot together nicely and the drums keep everything ticking over, and the vocals are near enough pitch-perfect. Can you feel me building to a “but“? Because I am…

There’s something crucial missing in all of this. As loathe as I am to condemn a band with history, think back to when alt-rock was in its heyday, of the bands and the music that typified the genre…being of a certain age, I go straight to stuff like At the Drive-In and Soundgarden. But even going further back, to founding fathers like My Bloody Valentine and Pearl Jam, they all had one thing in common; even on the first listen, their music rampaged straight out of the CD player (or tape deck…I believe I was actually rocking a minidisc in those days) and grabbed you right by the balls. Or the closest anatomical equivalent. They all had that spark, that special something that made the genre conquer the musical world for pretty much a decade, that was present even in those early-career bootlegs you spent half your teenage years searching out. And going on this album, it’s that spark that Order of Voices lack.

Sure, there’s potential in there, they’ve got a lot of the ingredients right, but at the risk of paraphrasing Walt Disney, there’s just no magic. There’s not really anything that’s going to keep you coming back time and time again; possibly the only way to be truly gripped by it would be to listen to it in a sensory deprivation tank. I don’t have one of those, so it took me a week and a half just to register the fact I’d actually listened to the album all the way through to review it. This isn’t just a feature of the decline of alt-rock, incidentally…there are perfectly good modern proponents of how the genre is done right going about, my current favourite being Chevelle. They’re a three-piece, and they make a much larger, more robust and frankly more memorable sound than the five members of Order of Voices combined. Enough about what I’d rather be listening to, anyway…

“Forgiveness” is perhaps the standout track on the album, and this might just be by merit of being the shortest (not counting instrumental closer “Into the Ocean”) - because it doesn’t go on too long, there are enough ideas in it to hold your attention. It‘s for this reason that “Don’t Falter”, which features a good chorus and reasonable hook, would be one of the stronger efforts - but it’s just a little overlong. The good ideas kind of get stretched out over six and a bit minutes and are eventually lost altogether. Order of Voices are perfectly capable of writing a good riff and a catchy chorus, but regardless how good these things are, they can’t carry a song for over five minutes alone. The instrumental track that closes the album, “Into the Ocean”, is a prime example of this - it’s one riff, with a sparse little drum part, that just goes on for three minutes.

Pretty much the same could be said of “Reaching Down”, and “Burn Black Light” - there’s trace evidence of that vital spark I was talking about in there, but it’s severely diluted. Expand that idea over 40 minutes of album and you’ve got the picture; the intention and to a large extent the execution are sound - nobody misses a note or a beat throughout - but there just aren’t enough great ideas in there to make this a good album. It’s those ideas that make a piece of music memorable, and while this album has the best of intentions and is very slickly presented, it’s nothing without them. If in future Order of Voices can keep up the ambition, intent and execution, but add in a lot more raw inspiration, then they might be able to revive the alt-rock movement. As it is, they’re just a reminder of its decline.

Genre : Metal / Heavy Rock

Article by Phil Sim