Sons of Cain by Kenny Maclean

Martin - It's always great when Kenny sends me over a review, I never know what I'm getting and it's good to sit and read something interesting every once in a while. I'm going to warn you though, the following article is not for the easily offended. If you are offended by the harsh truth or fowl language then I suggest perhaps going to read another one of the blogs. 

For those of you who know me personally, and judging from my generally mellow disposition, it may surprise you to know that my first ‘favorite’ band as a teenager was Metallica. When I first started playing bass it was because I wanted to be in a Thrash Metal band, the first Bass lines that I learned were by Cliff Burton, Steve Harris, Tom Araya and David Ellefson, Metal forms the basis for what a fellow respected musician once called a ‘Bass style very much of my own’. This is why I feel I am the perfect person to write a few words on Lochmaben 3 piece Sons of Cain.

Formed in 2009 and currently on the cusp of releasing their first recorded material, Sons of Cain describe their music as a mix between Metal and Rock, Mock if you will. Coincidently this is a fitting term to describe the song I’ve been given and the task of reviewing ‘Cursed Apocalypse’. 

I know this is a young band and they are just finding their feet musically, but I have to be honest from the get go, this song didn’t do it for me. If you’re going to play Metal you have to play from the Balls, there has to be a sense of being on the fringes of something massive. Reductively, for me Metal is the antithesis of groove, it’s the music of a youth who want to shout but don’t know quite at who or what to shout at. At its worst Metal is an annoyance, something created from the bowls of society to make you feel violated, but when Metal is good, it makes you feel immortal.

Take an archetypical Metal God, I’ll use Phil Anselmo as an example, he’s a total cunt, he looks like a cunt, acts like a cunt and sings like a cunt, but that cuntish mutherfucker has something. He believes in every growling cuntism that flop’s out of his cuntish mouth and that draws you in, to look at a performer who is so sincere in what he does is hypnotising. It should be the goal of every front man to become an ‘irresistible’ performer and for me somebody like Phil Anselmo achieves this. It may be an unfair comparison but from chord one, Sons of Cain lack any of this conviction. 

So lets get too it, The opening riff is the opening riff to The Wicker Man by Iron Maiden, It’s a great powerful riff, when Iron Maiden play it, but If you are going to ‘borrow’ try and tart it up a bit, make it a bit less obvious. It may just be the quality of the recording but the band  need to tighten up a bit, the tempo drags in places and there are some untidy bass fills in there. Also playing as a trio often comes with the problem of making the music interesting with the limitations that come with the instrumentation. A band such as ‘Fall of Troy’ gets away with it through sheer musicality and the ability to play interesting musical figures, judging from this effort I don’t really have confidence that this band would have the chops to create something truly innovative as a trio.  

Traditionally Metal lyrics as prose are awful, and this song is no exception. Metal vocalists get away with awful lyrics because its all in the delivery, going back to Phil Anselmo, he could sing Mary had a Little Lamb and it would sound brutal. The vocal’s here have a nervousness and thinness too them, The singer needs a few years of screaming into a wheely bin, only stopping to smoke Cubans and gurgle gin in an effort to strengthen those metal vocal chords and disguise his poorly worded Raymond E.Feist style tales of gods and whores.

I don’t have much else to say regarding the song because as a song there's not much to write about, its very short and quite uninteresting. I feel this review has been harsh but this is Metal, it’s a fuck you world and I want to do my bit for these kids by toughening them up. I'm sure if they really looked deep inside themselves they could find the seeds of a good band, I believe everybody has inert musical ability, im just not sure Sons of Cain have found there niche quite yet.

As a little apocryphal end note, I realised my dream of being in a Thrash Metal band when I left school, we were fucking awful.10 years later I found myself in the Blue Note Club in New York listening to Monty Alexander play some of the best Jazz you’ll hear anywhere in the world, The music I listen to today and play is such a contrast to those Metal beginnings. As a 16 year old I never would have considered playing anything but Metal but it turned out that Metal just became a doorway to a wider world of musical styles. Maybe for Sons of Cain this will be a learning experience and they will go on to greatness, but as they are now, they’re not for me.