Amasic
is a Rock/Punk band based out of Montreal. They have been a
pleasant surprise.
Most
of my reviews come because the band followed me on Twitter, they were
recommended by another musician, or I saw them live. In this case, I saw a link
for a video of a punk version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer",
checked it out, and it exceeded my expectations. That led me to listen more,
and I'm glad.
The
"Rudolph" cover is very punk, though many of the band's songs seem
less traditionally so. They reference Green Day as the best band, but for many
of the songs remind me more of All Time Low, especially with some resemblance
between the lead vocalists.
I
mention this as a way of getting to something that struck me about the band,
but that I may not explain right. Starting with "Rudolph", one reason
my expectations were low is that traditionally people have added a lot of
repeats that are as annoying as they are common. (I hate "Like a
lightbulb".)
The
Amasic version uses a few of those - "it glows", "ho ho",
and "yippee" - but without the overkill it enhances the energy of the
song, which is really good. Punk guitar goes well with the original melody,
which I wouldn't have expected and which makes me wonder about the rest of
Johnny Marks' and Gene Autry's back catalogs.
I
also found that they had other Christmas covers. It is common for Christmas
covers to be awful, either stale or ridiculous and in the worst cases both, but
that wasn't the case here. The versions sounded good, and that made December an
excellent time to review them.
In
addition, there was the album The Covers, Vol. 1, as well as several
covers on the Youtube channel. Normally I focus more on original music, because
I think it tells you more about the band, but I appreciated that they took some
songs that many people view as cheesy and treated them respectfully. In
addition, they did a reasonable cover of "Friday". I feel that song
deserves disrespect, though maybe some of that came out at the end of the song.
My
overall impression from that is that Amasic has a great deal of respect for
music in general, and that it informs how they practice and how they record and
how they view individual songs. It feels like you can rely on them to have good
output. I respect that.
And
all of that is not even getting into their original material, which is pretty
good. They have a 7-track EP from this year, The Things We Say. My
personal favorites from it are "All for Myself" and "You're a
Freak", but the band is definitely worth checking out.
They
have some availability on Amazon, but more on iTunes. No tour dates are
currently listed, but there is supposed to be new music out in 2015.
Old
post on why I hate "Friday":
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