FLIGHT- The Lead Riders EP

    As a musical tradition, my interest filtered through my dad's love of Bay Area late 60's and 70's rock.  At  that 12-13 year old range when kids establish their own tastes I was sooo into Nu- Metal until that sounds faded and a more technical, screamy kind of metal came to the forefront.  By then I was ready for something new and Death Cab had just released Transatlanticism. So bam-indie music here I come.


Nonetheless, there have always been indulgences.  I listened to all of Marilyn Manson's new releases.  I loooved She Wants Revenge.  Spineshank broke up and I got sad and then Jonny Santos ended up in a couple different bands and I got happy.  The Deftones and Tool never actually got 'bad' as far as I can tell, cause I still love them dearly. 

Which leads us to The Lead Riders EP by FLIGHT. 

Not Nu-Metal really, but undeniably influenced.  Most of the record is actually just moody and jostling, like the more intense moments of The Cure.  But the WHOOLE record, guitars, vocals, everything, is drenched in this warbling effect that used to factor into Manson in a huge way. She Wants Revenge too, they had the same deadpan vocal sound and a couple times they used this compressed electronic effect.  Their sound is meaty, thick, atmospheric.  Sometimes you can actually hear the air rattle when the bass is plowing away by itself.  The hooks are pretty huge too, this could be big alternative radio stuff if they had a cleaner mass-appeal sound.  But they don't and that will keep them in indie geekdom forever.....which is good for us.

I just couldn't help but thinking of skinny 17-year-olds loving the hell of out of this record and the 17-year-old in me loves it too.  In fact.....I want to see this band live, hold on, I'm gonna go look up tour dates. Wow, it was waaay harder to find that Myspace page than i thought it would be. Like, I had to look up the band name, the EP name and go to the second page of result......jomg! PS: I don't know what jomg means


aaaaaaannd no up coming shows.  Anyways, I really enjoyed it, so I vote yes.  Check 'em out here for tour dates when they come and check out their label, Zoo Music, here.