Monday, April 4, 2011

C IS FOR CRUSHED “MY MACHINE”

BLOGGING A TO Z CHALLENGE APRIL 2011


Since the whole focus of this blog is CD reviews, I’m approaching the “A to Z” challenge by posting a review from a different artist for each letter of the alphabet.

In the interests of full disclosure, many of these are reviews that were previously posted on my blog on My Space, and while they are new posts to this blog, and new to most of you, they are not new work on my part, except for going and retrieving them from My Space and gathering cover images and alphabetizing them. I guess that’s work.

But that enabled me to get a head start, and since April is a pretty busy month for me, the head start allowed me to participate. Think of this as a way to catch up on some of the music you missed over the past few years, as I suspect that many of these artists you will not have heard of, although some, of course, are household names.

If reading any of these ramblings inspires you to go check out the artist’s music, I hope you’ll come back with comments on what you think after listening for yourself.

Crushed deliver an effective blend of melodic rock, metal, and Goth in their excellent debut effort. Produced by Mike Clink, whose impressive resume includes work with Guns N' Roses, Motley Crue, Megadeth, and UFO, the band delivers a slickly produced album hard enough for a metal fan, but melodic enough to enjoy considerable commercial radio air play. If radio stations in Arizona ever played new music anymore. Well, they do play country and Jordin Sparks. But the jury is still out on whether that counts as playing music.


An early high point is the single-worthy track "Hovering," that truly spotlights Clink's production knowledge, with lead singer Mark Lauer displaying vocals that range from a whisper to a growl, along with great guitar work. The album gets heavier with each new track as Crushed blend styles to cook up their own unique genre.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/crushed

5 comments:

  1. DISCBRO ~
    A very cool album cover. I listened to the track "Hovering" and can tell you that I would have eaten that stuffs up in my teenage years, when I was also a big UFO and BOC fan.

    I also liked the old school racing footage they used in the video; it reminded me of the movie "American Graffiti", which of course in turn reminded me of the old school rockers like Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, and... oh, what was that other guy's name? --Oh, yeah: Eddie Cochran. (Ha!)

    I'm kinda wondering whether or not I will have previously heard of ANY artist you post about during the A To Z blogfest.

    ~ D-FensDogg
    'Loyal American Underground'

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  2. I've noticed your post for today is "N" for 'nuttin'

    So you can post all about Eddie and Brian on your own blog!

    I am predicting that you will recognize less than half of the artists during April, and will probably not have heard any of the albums by the artists you do know.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Actually, your prediction may even be too generous.

    But not so that I posted "N" for "Nuttin'" I posted "S" for "Sumpin'" ...at Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends.

    But to heck with Eddie and Brian. If they don't get no mention at "DiscConnected" they musta been overrated.

    ~ D-FensDogg
    'Loyal American Underground'

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  4. "sometimes I wonder what I'm gonna do...."

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  5. I haven't heard of Crushed before, but I love the sound of their music. Thanks for the review! :D

    ReplyDelete

HOBBY OR ADDICTION?

HOBBY OR ADDICTION?