Noise Ratchet – Self titled

Hard drum rolls, heavy guitar riffs, catchy bass melodies, mixed with melodic vocals is one thing Noise Ratchet can be, but that’s not all. They can also play soft melodic music with pianos and female vocals. So really, you can expect anything from this young, talented band. The opening track is by far my favorite. When Losing Ends starts off with a metallic slide, and then the heavy guitars come in with some drums by Brandon Young. The vocals come in and a very powerful, not the most prominent thing in the song (I believe the guitars and drumming out power them), but they are very catchy none the less. A very good opening track, one that gets your attention right away.

Next is Fiction Arms, this one starts off with a heavy drum rhythm before the vocals are introduced. Once again, they take a slight backseat to the musical instruments as the guitars rip through riff after riff. One part I really enjoy is around 1:50 into it, where the instruments tone it down a bit as the vocals come in, in a very powerful manner. Then a drum roll comes in and picks up the speed to end the album off.

The worst song on this 6 song EP is the fourth, A Way To The Heart, it is the second longest song on the album and incredibly slow. It really slows down the beat of the EP and has bad placement in the album.  It was originally a piano ballad on “Till We Have Faces”, they have redone it with some acoustic guitars added into it. The piano is done by their producer, Sean O’Donnell and the female vocals are added in by Tiffany Heflin. It really slows down the pace and is not a very good song by this up and coming band. New Room picks up the pace though with a heavy guitar and bass melody to open it up. It slows down a bit for the vocals to enter, but only a very small bit. This song has a couple sets of vocals which come near to the edge of screaming, which gives it a nice feel and a little extra touch.

The final song is one which I am not incredibly impressed with either. Desire  is almost 8 minutes long and just drags on for way too long. It is a slow song, somewhat like the fourth track, but still better. It slows down the pace a lot again (which is sometimes good to end an album with), but they do it a bit too much here.

Overall, this EP was a decent one, but by no means great. If you are thinking of getting a new Militia Group release, this is a good one, but I’d recommend Acceptance‘s new one, Black Lines To Battle Fileda bit more then this one.