Hunted - Crawl
Tracks: Strangers Judgement Jump The Gun Swing Of The Pendulum Zachary Jazz Take Me Back Wish U Wuz Ded Tattoo Baby Victim Richman Jnr Answer My Prayer Mister Religion LFK El Salvador Slaughterhouse Field See You Time: 68:22 m:s Producers : Hunted & Allan Keen Label: Primate Records Year: 1995
I hadn't heard of Hunted until mainman Andy Milsom got in touch to find out if I'd be interested in including a review of their album in 'Mood Swings'. Since then I've seen an extremely positive review of their album in Hard Roxx.
Hunted hail from Bristol, England and were winners of BBC Radio 1's Rock Wars in June '93, which earned them a Radio 1 session. In the next couple of years there was some record label interest, but a deal didn't materialize. This album features songs written and recorded in various sessions between '93 and '95. In the face of record company apathy, the band put this out themselves in 95. The band is still unsigned and is about to go into the studio to record a second album.
If you want to find out about the band then why not surf on over to their web site. The first thing you will notice is a 'BritRock' gif. BritRock makes me think about bands like Skunk Anansie and Terrorvision. Both of these have been fairly successful at making it into the charts, but neither particularly strike a chord with me.
A couple of listens and I think the BritRock tag is misleading. Maybe I just have the wrong idea about BritRock, it might be as simple as being about being a British rock band, but I've got this idea in my head that it's got something to do with the type of music that evolved from grunge as well. Hunted is a good, almost old fashioned, British rock band. The band has obviously used this self-financed album to display the fact that they are fairly adept at a number of musical styles. In fact, they remind me of a time when a band was a rock band and you didn't immediately try to pigeonhole them.
Let's get the short quirky tracks out of the way. Zachary Jazz is a short jazzy vocal number in the same vein as Slaughter finished off their first album. Richman Jnr is a brief instrumental. LFK and EL Salvador feature some samples.
Strangers, Judgement, Swing Of The Pendulum, Take Me Back, Wish U Wuz Dead, Tattoo are all best decribed as hard rock. Judgement really annoyed me for quite a while. I knew that it reminded me of another band, but couldn't think who. Finally, it dawned on me that it was Kiss Of The Gypsy. Swing Of The Pendulum starts of with a big Rainbow style Arabic flavour guitar intro, before continuing the Arabic flavour in a Diamond Head sounding rocker. Wish U Wuz Ded has a memorable chorus that wouldn't have been out of place on an early Thunder album and is guaranteed to stick in your head.
When it comes to ballads, it would appear that Poison are the biggest influence. Jump The Gun is the first example and See You is another drop of Poison.
A couple of tracks hint at a punk/new wave influence somewhere in their past. Complete with John Lydon style vocals, the Sex Pistols get a bit of a revival on Victim. In days gone by it might have made it into the charts. Slaughterhouse Field is a modern sounding tune that could be by Terrorvision.
Baby sees the band veering close to Dan Reed territory. Mister Religion has REM vibe to it - REM meets Thin Lizzy.
So out of all that lot my favourite tracks are Jump The Gun, Swing Of The Pendulum, Wish U Wuz Ded and Mister Religion.
Tracks that don't work for me are Take Me Back, Tattoo (sounds like playing fast just for the sake of it) and Answer My Prayer.
Keeping all the bases covered, there's even a couple of snippets of music waiting for you after the end of track 17.
With the variety on offer, there should be something for everyone on this. The band are about to go into the studio to record material for a second CD. It's a shame they aren't doing this with record label backing. It will be interesting to see how the second album turns out. I hope they keep up the variety and that they don't change their style in an attempt to secure a record deal.
Rating: 8
If you’re interested in this one, then go to the Links page where you can surf on over to their web site to get details on how to purchase it.
