Album Review

Feud - WaterdogFeud – Waterdog

Is it 1994 again? Apparently its 2011, sorry for the confusion it’s just the debut full length studio album from The Feud takes me back in time. We all remember those days; the days when Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were the in thing; well this British 4 piece don’t think that grunge is dead as they try to rekindle the embers of a once great era. The question is though what else does a British band really have to give to a genre that really has been milked for all it has? Also do we really need another era of grunge bands when all the evident originality has been swept up and put out by some of the greatest musicians in the world? Let’s find some answers.

They open up the album with song “Dying to Meat You” is heavily distorted and consists of vocals that are constantly playing tug and pull over the line of being classed as modern rock and grunge, here however a more defiant relation to Corey Taylor as opposed to that of Kurt Cobain. Further along in the album we have “Breathe”, which with every fibre of its being is screaming Nirvana to the extent where some could actually accuse the band of plagiarism; it’s not just Nirvana that the band draws influence from, that much is blatantly obvious, more sounds they go for are more along Weezer and Foo Fighters (“Sick and Tired” sounds extremely similar to “My Hero”).

I can make whatever comparisons I want – which I have because it’s almost exact – but at the end of the day the genre has had its day, hell “Don’t Care” has a section of “Hey! Hey!” which is almost exactly like “Heart Shaped Box” but am I going to turn it off and go in a mood? No of course I’m not I’m going to sit here and listen to more because its bringing back a genre for me that I’ve been neglecting as of late, sure I might go off and listen to Nirvana or Pearl Jam now because I’m in the mood for it but I think over time I would revisit this album a few times.

With all that being said then it seems to me that the question was answered almost instantly; was this album a breath of fresh originality in a dominated genre? Of course not, in all honesty I wasn’t expecting the band to revitalise a dying genre. One can hardly complain about that though with the lack of grunge bands to emerge after the scene died, at least The Feud had a go at trying to bring it back. With a sea of bands in modern music pretty much stealing sounds from one another with every band receiving a comment that they’ve ripped somebody of nowadays, at least they weren’t trying to copy some of the crap you hear these days, I say amen to that.

2.5/5

Review by James Webb

 Band Members

Greg
Guy
Ian
Tom
 Track Listing
1. Dying to Meat You
2. Don’t Cry
3. Breathe
4. Through Your Eyes
5. Sick and Tired
6. Blame Me
7. Don’t Care
8. Alkaline
9. Caroline
10. Tearaway
11. Get Out
12. Desolate Man
 Band Related Links
Feud MySpace
 Review Score Code
- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
- What Was That?