VWMusic

All images courtesy of Chipster PR

By Fábio Moniz
fabiorubenmoniz@gmail.com

A music box.

When you pull the cord, what do we get but a great introduction from the death screen of the nostalgia of our lives? We tune in to the channel of our memories and let Long Distance Calling lead us through our storage, in a loop of tasty riffs and cool melodies.

Normality is ephemeral.

The first seconds of the second track enables us to make an acquaintance with the band and their playing style, indeed. Solid and heavy, but soft in its meaning and words. Words? Because they easily convey the message with the notes they play, the scales, and melodies, so everybody can understand, as if they were words themselves. The riffs have a clear meaning.

Triplets.

What about the triplet feel of the drumbeat? Really cool! The rhythm section is very close tight, and it can really get the band together. Do not make less of these band members’ work!

Racing our way through our biological hard drives.

It sounds like the first level of your favorite outer space racing game. It is not like your daily metal band, nor a shopping mall elevator kind of song – say that given elevator played a metal version of your usual elevator song.

It causes some damage, but it fixes things at the same rate. There’s an exchange, and gains are reciprocal. We are to be entertained, explore past memories, and be at ease with some of the memories that haunt us; while these great musicians are to explore their creativity in composition, develop new techniques and improve already acquired skills, and have fun together as a band.

Sloth takes over us, sometimes.

We would like to remain silent and idle when the track “Sloth” strikes us with sweet melodies, and the saxophone plays the sweet aroma of comfort. It hits us sweetly and we feel the need to listen to its sound being driven by the rhythm section to places we weren’t acquainted with, yet.

Add a bit of progress to that.

Advancing through the album, we get to taste, bit by bit, progressive metal, something that adds a different flavor to it. The simplicity of the songs, mixed with rhythmic and melodic complexity, now takes a new spicy sauce. The surprise we, as listeners, are looking for, is given to us in small packages, so as to not take them for granted, and savor them in gourmet amounts.

To finalize, “Eraser” works as the perfect outro. It provides the perfect atmosphere to embrace the moment we open our eyes and meet again with reality, realizing that our memories are now fixed, being given a new light and perspective we hadn’t given the chance to be looked from.

Follow Long Distance Calling’s vibrations and give their latest album Eraser a try. You won’t regret it.

– Fábio Moniz is a columnist for www.vwmusicrocks.com and may be reached at fabiorubenmoniz@gmail.com