Artist: "Massive Complaints"

Album: "The Monumental Moan"

The Monumental Moan This band have just got to be the strangest bunch you will ever come across!  They make Slipknot look quite 'suit and tie'.  Unfortunately, information about them is very scarce, so I'm unable to tell you too much about them.

"The Monumental Moan" is their first album and what a debut it is.  Fronted by "Turt", the vocalist shows such talent that he varies his style from Ian Gillan type shrieks, full bodied Tom Araya bellows, guttural Entombed dis-embowlment to gentle Cheap Trick-ery.

The rest of the band show equal versatility, from the (wailing and then gentle, then emotionally weeping) lead guitars of "Kermit" to the solid and dependable rhythm of Bass guitar (Blob) and drums (Croakit).

The album consists of a generous 15 tracks, which range from 30 seconds to 8 minutes long.  They show such diverse influences as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to KorN, from All About Eve to Coal Chamber!  As you can imagine, with that sort of inspiration you are going to produce something quite different, and indeed they do.

Surprisingly, having said all that, this album actually seems to have a certain amount of cohesion and maturity that the ingredient would have you disbelieving.  It's kinda like  mixing some of the finest wine money can buy, with a pint of your Dad's homebrew and it ends up tasting like Moet and Chandon!!

At this point, I was going to go through some of the tracks, and try to paint a picture of what is to be found, but as the picture would end up looking like something that a chimp has just created, I thought better of it.   However, I will bet any money that it will turn out to be a rare and valuable Van Gogh.

Anyway, better to try and give an overall impression.   This is a really good solid rock album that is packed with a multiplicity of well written and well performed songs, almost all of them deserving there place on the CD.   On top of that it has been excellently produced but un-credited.  Well done chaps...

Rigsby. Rated 9/10

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