Sunday, April 24, 2011

TUBEFREEKS: "Complex Disorders"


Rating: 5/10

Label: TSM/SLW 2011

Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

Harsh, Tubefreeks have perversely put together a collection of the kind of grunge cliches' you thought had gone out with the mid-nineties. Nice, these guys have just released a brand new CD titled "Complex Disorders" with twelve retro nineties songs in the tradition of Alice In Chains and Stone Temple Pilots. It's merely their dumb luck that I'am more of a fan of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam as I always though of STP as highly overrated music. Seriously, you go ahead right now and name any songs off their albums!!! Ehhh, nope. Alice In Chains? A one-hit-album kind of band in my books... but what a superb effort they came up with in the year of 1992 ("Dirt"). Definitely one of my fave albums of 92'. But it's not like they released a bunch of great albums (rater the opposite as all their follow-ups were crap).

Tubefreeks is a trio from Baltimore, MD, U.S. of A, consisting of Paul van Valkenburgh (vocals/bass), Shawn Vickers (guitars), and Geoff Burrell (drums). The band's fueled with psychotics riffs and solos of Vickers and "typical" Grunge-like vocals by Valkenburgh (he's been spending way too much time listening and copying all the phrases of AIC's Layne and STP). The result of these influences and style is a high-energy compilation of gloomy nineties rock and personal observations, mainly about, "Dumb Games", "Warm December" and one "Tripped Out Man". It's supposed to be "alternative" metal music, but how alternative can you be if your top-of-the-charts and MTV commercial??? Rambling occasionally, Tubefreeks has cut an album that does awake fond memories of long-gone days. It's just not that very original or too interesting in the long run (mainly due to the STP influences).

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