Miss Used are a four-piece psychedelic blues/grunge band from Auckland, New Zealand. These guys get the big tick from me! Their 5-track debut EP has been released on 20 November 2020 after only being together a couple years.
Paraland has a great feel with some really nice hooks and melodies. Grunge rooted – psychedelic blues, with a New Orleans hard rock aggression that keeps you guessing where each tracks going.
Paranoid Wonderland is s a big, fat, dirty, blues rocker! Nothing more to say, it kicks ass. What a great start to this EP.
Collapsing Building is a cruisy track, with a nice atmosphere provided by the bassline casually swimming around the guitars. Great lead break also.
Hit The Ground Running has a stomping dirty rock groove straight from the get go. It’s a standout track for me. I reckon the drums drive this bad boy! A lot of works gone tracking the vocals, with tasteful use of effects. Miss Used’s heavy influences pop in this track before the final double chorus, and I was happily surprised with the nice tight gaps in the outro- definitely a great live track no doubt.
Garden Freak is a spacious, laid back, vocally driven track. It’s not my cup of tea, although the vocal harmonies and guitar work shows the diverse style these guys have – it reminds me of 311.
Born To Die follows Garden Freak nicely in the sequential listening experience, bearing in mind I’m an old school ‘listen from start to finish’ guy. This song is lyrically well thought out with great call and response vocals. It’s powerful, and a bit depressing – in a good way.
The only negative point I’ll make is that the drums came across as being slightly underproduced, and they were therefore not so prominent in the mix. With so much effort put into everything else on this EP, I feel maybe time/money has gotten in the way of emphasising the drummers hard work.
I think there’s more to be seen and heard from Miss Used. All and all, I thoroughly enjoyed this EP.
Nice work guys!
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About the author KevinLakius
Lakius, metal band from Auckland, New Zealand. Formed 2019.Tony-vocals Ross-drums Cory-guitar. In the winter of ‘23 whilst hunting the elusive 7 string guitar string sets of strings, for guitars, in the urban wasteland of Auckland , fate thrust its destinied self across the lads paths and re united them with long lost-long haired- metal brother in arms Ross to complete Lakius,bringing balance to the realm! Lakius quickly became known as New Zealand’s 4th best post-industrial/groove-metal duo with their debut single, Student of Fools, followed by Kaos High. During the global pandemic of Lakius were separated by distance, and quarantine style nation wide lockdown. Tony continued writing, Cory continued his search for The Ross. Isolation led the duo down a more industrial path, This Tension . Ross was still lost,his memory lived on in the hearts of the lads dreams. Condemning large corporate structures 2023 Love The Firm. New single ‘Hammer
