Album Review: Live & Unplugged

The Symphony of Screams has been around for a fair while now and the first time I personally came across them was at Rock to Wellington back in 2008. That was a huge show with a line-up that put them in front of a plethora of metal and hard rock stars that would have been any 80’s teenager’s wet dream. The Symphony had a huge audience and lapped it up giving the punters a taste of some Kiwi metal and hard rock that most of the audience wouldn’t have been aware of. I still have the single CD that was passed out to those that were there.

Since that show they have released two CDs Heed To The Voices in 2012 and Radio Candy in 2013 with both albums showing growth in their style and musicianship.

I hadn’t heard much from them since the Rock to Wellington show so it was great to see a release come across my desk for review. This album is very different from any of their previous releases starting with the fact that it’s all acoustic and live. It’s crazy how different Te Matera Smith’s voice sounds with each song. In the first song Never Be Closed he has a sound not too dissimilar to Ian Astbury and Jim Morrison and then with Singers Oil he is back to his traditional hard rock voice. In the words of the artists themselves this is how the songs were written and how they should sound and to be honest, they do come across good in this light.

All of the songs have a lot more texture with acoustic guitar as each note on the guitar is more pronounced and there is more picking notes rather than chords so to speak which gives the song much more of a emotional element. I’m more of a metalhead but I prefer the acoustic versions of the songs as there’s more power and feeling in them.

This live album covers material from both of their earlier releases and there is only one new song for this one and that is saved to lucky last and it’s a blinder. They have quite a storyteller vibe as the vocals and songs are sung to the listener in a style as if they are being told something rather than a song just sung about something. Although this is an acoustic album it has quite a grungy edge and it takes me back to listening to some of Alice in Chains and days of the new releases. I wouldn’t be upset if they recorded their next album as an acoustic album rather than electric as they shine in this field.

I enjoyed listening to this album and recommend it to hard rock and fans of guitar music. It has plenty of flavour and is a great representation of Kiwi music.

/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;