So here I am. Just became a proud member of Metalrage and now officially reviewer. Today I found two cd’s on my doormat. But for this one I threw Thursday out of my cd player and popped in Curtiss. An emo pop rock band from la France………

For those who’ve been in France for the holidays will know that most French people don’t speak English. And the few that are slightly able to spit out some words, spit out more bullshit than proper English. Of course I say this with all the respect. The fact here is that there is no way you can hear that Curtiss is from France! Alexandre Menicucci is able to sing without any accent. And with ‘able to sing’ I mean: really able to sing! His voice is worth millions! But first things first.

 

The album opens with the song ‘Stimilus’. The first thing that I noticed here were the toms of the drums. In total this album is produced pretty well! Accept for that part of the drums. It sounds very dry and short. Not at all what toms should sound like. But for the rest…… it sounds great.

 

In the second song ‘Clockwise’ you’ll find out this is not just a so called emo pop rock band. You could leave the pop home when you want to put this music in a genre. You can even find some subtle metal in it. ‘Clockwise’ is one of the few songs that contains some screaming. Some bad screaming if I may say. It sounds a bit forced and not steady. Later on in the album you’ll hear some backing up screaming which sounds pretty good. It’s only in this song that it is not quite my kind of stuff.

 

Once arrived at song number five Curtiss convinced me! These songs are built up really well! The band has only been together since September 2002 and did change the line-up a few times. Though it sounds like they’ve been playing together since childhood. Their music is in total balance. They know exactly what they want and you can obviously hear that! This is serious music played by some serious artists!

 

All band members know how to use their instruments. Maybe even better than their own   le pénis (there is no need to lie, we all had those cold and lonely winter nights). Some people forget how important a good singer is. The voice can create or break the band. In this case, first of all, there’s a lot that needs to be done if you want to break this band! And even if you’d succeeded in that, the singer would create the band again. Wow! This guy has got a killer voice. It reminds me a bit of the singer of Skip The Rush sometimes.

 

The songs are sometimes a bit meditative. Some of them got those subtle plays in the middle of the songs. Which makes it, when it’s played well (like here), very relaxed to listen to. 

My conclusion is that Curtiss is a band with high potential. Only that scream on ‘Clockwise’ could be better and the toms on the drums (which are just personal opinions). On the other hand, Curtiss is blessed with got a good singer, it has got nice playing by the rest of the band, their music is all balanced, it has got a good mix of (pop)rock and emo and it is very good produced. 


Go check them out!! 

Love, 

Maurits