The Beatsteaks – Living Targets

  • Bobby Gorman posted
  • Reviews

The Beatsteaks

Living Targets - Epitaph Records

These five young men from Germany have made quiet an album here. Since forming in 1995 while in high school, they have made a major impact in Germany music. On only their 100th show, they ere playing in front of 5000 plus fans, and even got over 7000 fans watching them at Berlin’s Bizarre Festival. With Arnim Teutoburg-weib on vocals and guitar,  Peter Baumann on guitar and vocals as well, Alexander Robwaag on bass, Bernd Kurtzke on guitar and Thomas Gotz on drums, The Beatsteaks crate a sound uniqkly to themselves.

First up is Not Ready To Rock, it is the shortest song clocking in at 1:27. It starts off with some talking and then goes into a steady beat and then vocals come in. It is a ok song, but could be a lot better, its a pretty good opener, but definitely not the best song on the album. God Knows is the next song, this one I like way more then the previous. it is fast paced with good vocals and wonderful riffs.

The third song is the first single of their album, Let Me In. If you put the disc into your computer and then select your CD drive, you can watch the music video for the song. the video is pretty good, them singing the song, spinning on the platform (which is like the CD itself). It’s not the most original video, but at least its not them just playing live, that is being overdone way to much recently. The song itself is pretty good. It starts off with a steady riff. The vocals at the beginning kinda remind me of Denko Jones, but then they get better in the chorus. Two minutes in, it slows down and then goes quiet for a couple seconds, then the music and vocals come back strong and hard. Its a good song, and a good choice for the single.

Now I am going to skip Soothe Me (a good song, slower then the previous three songs), Above Me and This One and go right to Disconected. This too is a slow song, throughout the entire song (except for 2 minutes to 2:30 minutes, where there is a different beat that sound really cool) there is a steady drum beat with lots of cymbals. Its a powerful song (Is this world, is this world disconected).

I will skip A-way and Mirrored and go straight to my three favorite songs, Run RunTo Be Strong and Summer. The last three songs are the best ones on the album. Run Run has an amazing beat throughout and good lyrics, overall its a great song. To Be Strong has a completely different sound then the rest of the album, and it is an effective sound for sure. This is a powerful song about just being strong and fighting on. This is for sure my favorite song on the entire CD, but Summer is following right behind it. This too has a different sound then the rest. At the beginning there is a great guitar (or bass, I can never tell the difference) riff.  It has a heavy beat and powerful lyrics, making this an amazing song. Also, after Summer there is some dead air, then there is a bonus song, which I believed is called Yeah! I believe that the Beatsteaks could’ve done way better on this then they did.

Overall, I give this album a 3.5/5 stars rating, but I do suggest you listen to some of the songs before you buy the album because I don’t think it is for everyone. And listen to the songs more then once, the more I listened to the album, the more I am attracted to it.