Belvedere – Fast Forward Eats The Tape

For the past few years fast-paced punk rock has been stuffed on the shelf behind the gleaming shine of new age punk-pop. Belvedere is one of those bands who have found a crack in the back of the shelving and ran as far away as they could from the labels that come along with these genres and catagories and just do what they feel is right. And what they feel is right sure does agree with my tastes.

The album starts off on the wrong note for me, I must say this is my most flagrant dislike. The first word to the first song on this album is what most would call a ‘curse’ word (ooh, shudder at the thought) which personally I’m not a huge fan of. Swearing in music to me is like saying to everyone that you’ve run out of creativity. I was able to look past this, though, and focus on the meaning of the words and the music that accompanies them. I was impressed; the instrumental work on this album is well thought out and executed fluently. There is definately talent in this band, and they don’t hide it. What they bring is what they have, every ounce of creativity in their minds comes out through their instruments leaving the listener pleased and eager for more.

Vocals on this record are impressively real. I will guarentee they won’t be winning any ‘best voice’ competitions, but the voices are genuine, they speak so that you may hear the message and not focus on the melody as much. These are guys who didn’t go to vocal school, studying warm ups and such. These are guys who sing from the heart and speak from the mind, with pretty intelligent lyrics to back them up. My personal favourite is the song All About Perspective which speaks of the corrupting power of television. They sing “don’t change the channel, try to change your mind”. I agree of course, people need to spend more time away from the tv screen. But then again, here I sit at a computer where I spend most of my time while at home. One day I’ll learn, I’m sure of it.

The length of the songs is one thing that didn’t sit well with me. On average the songs come out to between two and three minutes, but each second is packed with as much action as they could legally get away with. With this much intensity packed into such small time, I can proudly say that Belvedere shows what Canada has to offer, and I hope you’re ready to open your ears.