Quickening – A Victory

Quickening – A Victory / 4 Songs / http://www.quickening.tv / [email protected] / Reviewed 26 September 2003

The brand of rock that Quickening play is the type of introspective, retro-shoegazing emo that has catapulted such independent labels as Deep Elm to the forefront. This fact is not that amazing after learning that Quickening is from Cleveland, which Deep Elm’s own Brandtson calls home.Rich instrumentation swirls around the rich vocals laid down by James. Quickening seems to be a band that is relatively well-hyped, and I believe it is for a good reason. The four tracks that are on the disc are fairly long, but the CD still ends up much too short for the true fan. Starting out almost as a mix of Green Day and Filter guitar chords, the title track ends up going more into a late-nineties rock track.

Dosed with distortion almost too heavy for the backing guitars, “Find Yourself” continues the general trend of mixing very positive pop-punk influences with a definite desire for complicated arrangement What really makes itself a barrier for full enjoyment of the CD is the dependence of the same general guitar sound for every song. The crunchy rhythms that are in this, reminiscent of Audioslave, Andrew W.K., Alice in Chains, or even Sonic Youth, are repeated with only the slightest degree of modification. The music on this disc is like a fine chocolate – it appeals to the senses, but most people would be advised to only indulge in a little bit of it.

Quickening are at a point in their career where they could go two radically different ways. The first way, if they chose to cut a little down from the average time of their songs and maybe stick more closely to the established three-chord hierarchy would see them going onto success in mTV or another outlet. The second way would be to diversify their sound by using different chords, and one could see the next Appleseed Cast or even Brandtson. There is no denying that Quickening has the ability to draw crowds or write a catchy post-emo song, but it will be interesting to see where they do end up.

Rating : 5.9/10

Top Track : 1.0