Quick Reviews: Ten & Issa

It's a two-for-one special today.

Ten - Something Wicked This Way Comes

Recently, I was listening to a compilation of songs from the albums Gary Hughes wrote for Bob Catley in the early 00s. Something struck me as they played, and as I was sucked into just how damn good it was; passion. Gary is a fine singer, but all of these recent Ten albums have lacked passion. His voice is rather flat and tame, but he doesn't write music that plays into that. Something like the first Pale Waves album, "My Mind Makes Noises", uses vocal limitations and flat detachment to build an atmosphere that wouldn't work without it. Hughes is writing what should be big and hooky melodic metal, but his singing is too soft and serene for those hooks to ever be sharp.

A song like "Brave New Lie" should be awesome, and in my mind I can hear it as a gloriously huge melodic metal song. Give it to the right singer, and it can absolutely soar. But with Hughes singing, the hook has no energy at all to it. You would think with guitars saturated with distortion, things would be heavy and epic and awesome, but Ten continues to be less than the sum of its parts. The record comes off sounding like a soft rock record masquerading as something with more 'cred', and I never once feel like banging my head or pumping my fist.

But at least this one isn't overtly religious, or filled with terrible lyrics about movie monsters. That's a relief.

Issa - Lights Of Japan

The big problem with Issa is nothing to do with her, but rather her label. They pump out so much music that sounds just like this that when an album comes along that isn't from their conveyor belt of songs, it's still hard to get excited about it. I enjoyed the first Issa album I heard, and this one is very much in the same mold. But when there are two or three albums nearly indistinguishable from this coming out every month, trying to stand out from any of them is hard. It helps that Issa gets songwriting contributions from outside the usual three writers responsible for these albums, but even these writers have a tangled history with the factory-farming methods.

What that means is the record is perfectly enjoyable melodic rock, but it has no identity of its own. The only thing separating this from all the other similar albums is Issa's voice, and I'm not sure that is enough. Over the course of the year, we're sure to get a glut of melodic rock, as we always do, and my experience with this record doesn't lead me to believe this is going to stand out among that long list of records when everything shakes out. This record is good, and it's perfectly pleasant to listen to, but even in the first weeks of a new year, it sounds played out.