The Beat Surrender

Minus are an Icelandic four piece who have been generating some good reviews (not that this means anything to me) and from the promo material sounded like they were right up my street. I decided to give them a go, and I’m pleased I did. Straightaway the album kicks off with a good heavy groovin’ intro and keeps returning to this throughout.

From a percussion point of view, it’s high impact stuff, but it’s not too heavy duty – you can make out what’s being sung, anyway. Musically it can get quite heavy, almost as heavy as some of the real heavy stuff I listen to…but the difference is that Minus have a singer, not a gargling Klingon on vocals. Not all the songs are the same; one of them starts off with the steel guitar before going full blast into the guitaring. Anyway, the drumming is skilled, crisp and on the mark as is the guitar work.

As I’ve just said, each song is different meaning the band don’t seem to have a recognisable style to me (apart from their Stoner rock sound), but the lack of repetition makes for an entertaining album.

There is some great production on this album too, it seems to have complimentary effects in all the right places. This has been provided by Joe Baressi (Queens Of The Stone Age, Tool); I’d be interested to find out how much input the band had in this.

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