The Vincent Black Shadow is a Canadian five-piece band signed to the Bodog record label. ‘Fears in the Water’ is the debut album from the band and comprises of a grand total of thirteen tracks amassing to fifty one minutes of music. For the most part the tracks tend to clock in at around the four minute mark and the sound created here can be quite a hard hitting one.
The ‘Fears in the Water’ album is quite an interesting one, the band features a female lead vocalist and it is her voice that stands out strongly throughout the album as the key feature of the music that has here been created. The vocal style of The Vincent Black Shadow front woman Cassandra Ford is extremely similar to that of Gwen Stefani, the vocal sound created throughout this album comes across strongly and always there is great power in her voice. Although the bands singer is strong; not always do the other components of the music work too well here with this album. Sometimes it seems that this band is trying to create a few too many sounds at once and the music therefore can on occasion sound a little messy.
Beginning with ‘Metro’ the album starts quite strongly here, the chorus is rather repetitive but the track does I feel work quite well. The vocals sound strong here but the repetitive nature of the music detracts away from the overall quality of the sound that has here been created. It’s a well constructed track, the chorus can cause quite an irritation however and this is in fact something that is true of many of the tracks on this album. Never is the music particularly bad as such, the instrumental element just has quite a tendency to be more than a little repetitive.
Throughout this ‘Fears in the Water’ album the guitars always possess great strength and accompany the vocals perfectly. The guitars are excellent, the vocals are brilliant, but often the melodies created here are not hugely impressive. All too often here the tracks begin well but soon become irritating as the repetitive nature of the music begins to grate. This is not to take anything away from the quality of the vocal performance; always the voice of Cassandra Ford is incredibly strong here and never does the power of her voice cease to amaze me.
Title track ‘Fears in the Water’ is probably the best track that this album has to offer, the music is well presented by the band here and always the sound created here is a strong one. The track progresses well and never is there a dull moment here. There’s some strong guitar work, the vocals are powerful as ever and every element of the music just seems to come together to perfection. I really have a great appreciation for the title track on this album, the sound created suits the band strongly and had the band produced more tracks here of this sort of style then the album would be a lot better I feel. It’s a powerful rock track, the best way to describe the sound created here would be to say that it is quite similar to that of Evanescence and my opinion of the track is that it is absolutely excellent.
‘Dream’ has to be my least favourite track from this album, it just doesn’t seem to work and the plodding pace of the instrumental element and stretching of the word ‘dream’ to about ten seconds in length is really quite an odd one. It’s by far the weakest track on this album in my opinion, I just fail to see the appeal of the track and every time I listen to it the droning nature of the music fails to impress me. There are times here when the vocal performance is incredibly strong and huge power can be felt protruding through, for the most part however the track just seems to fail.
The main positive that can be drawn from this album is the excellence of the voice of front woman Cassandra Ford, the guitars possess great strength also but it is truly the vocalist that is the star of the show here. Despite the supreme vocal performance here, the music created is really quite a disappointment on the whole. Many of the tracks featured on this album do not progress too well at all and listening to this album can therefore be quite a disappointment. The Vincent Black Shadow is most certainly a band with great potential; work certainly needs to be put in on the instrumental side of things however as at current I just do not feel that this band is quite the finished article. The repetitive nature of the music is a great let down here, something that stops the album from ever being truly excellent and an element that holds back the overall quality of the music.
Label: Bodog Music
Release Date: 5th November 2007
Rating:
UK based film graduate with a huge passion for music, sports and video games.
