NOVELS - Savior

Novels - Savior

10 songs
40:58 minutes
***** ***
Yr Letter

Bandpage

Time must have stood still for French trio Novels, whose album Savior sounds like coming straight from the Nineties. Instead of trying anything new, these guys embrace the qualities of noisy alternative rock the way it was popular fifteen years ago. The CD has been mastered by Ted Jensen who worked in the past with the likes of Deftones, Alice In Chains, Muse, Sigur Ros,…, which should give you an approximate idea of what to expect.

Novels are consequently hardly original, but that doesn’t matter because they are really great at what they are doing. The guitar is taking a central position, delivering mighty distorted riffs, and the nicely hoarse vocals match this wall of sound perfectly. Of course there are also plenty of moments that use the quiet/loud dynamics that were mandatory for that genre in its heyday. This might all sound quite derivative, but the involved devotion is so pure and unadulterated that the final result actually sounds more convincing and certainly less melodramatic than what some of the more popular bands of the era came up with.

One thing is for sure: Novels definitely don’t sound French. The sprawling guitar walls and the tight rhythm section have a definite American touch, and even the vocalist has enough emotive power to make his contribution clearly stand out. If you are tired of mediocre upstarts trying to jump on every new bandwagon, you’d want to check out Novels who may sound like from the previous millennium but at least do their thing with style.

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