I like bit of drama, don’t you? Good, for that’s what you get with Australian band No Escape For the King and their debut album “13 Fjords” has nine times the drama that you would get with your average sensitive singer songwriter.
I’m sure that band would not deny their late eighties/early nineties influences and they use them to convincing effect to bake a sonic cake out of a chunk of rock, a lot of emotions and no small amount of purposeful guitar work. This is the sound of INXS meeting indie rock in the bar at the end of the street (the one right next to the theatre).
A lot of this band’s appeal lies in the vocals of Matt Cheetham who throws himself like a seasoned trouper into each and every song. “Reality” is the high point with lyrical obscurity potently mixed with old style hair rock guitars. In lesser hands, a song like that could have come off as simply pretentious but here it sounds like a swaggering attack on the charts of the past.