New bands and first releases are always an interesting enigma, there’s always a hint of anticipation when putting on a new album for the first time, will this be the next big thing? Will it offer something new? Will it fall flat on its face? Slaves To Gravity aren’t necessarily a new band but this is their first release excluding two singles which are both on the album.

It’s hard to really say anything exciting about the band, they’ve got their stuff together and their good at what they do but that’s about it in the way of positives. The album sort of just happens, the first few songs flash by in a slur of repetitiveness and it begins to feel as though there’s not much point going past the first three or four songs, though as it unfolds there’s eventually a few reasons for sticking with it.

Slaves To Gravity are a good, tight band, and have done well for themselves with UK and US tours, considering they only started up in the summer of 2006. Some of the songs reek of over-indulgence and they do tend to outstay their welcomes, sometimes spoiling the appeal of a song. ‘Lg Halo’ is a fine example of this, starts off brilliantly but becomes a bit too much by the end of it’s near five minutes, ‘My Poor Hand’ follows it well in the middle of the album, almost as a reward for those listeners who stayed through the initial onslaught of distortion and heavy, cliché-laden heavy rock, although this gradually disintegrates to more onslaughts.

Although let’s not completely overlook the beginning, getting to some of the highlights requires that you at least give the album that much of your time. It starts off with full-on intent of rocking you to the core, heavy bass followed by similarly heavy guitar riffs is what greets you with opener ‘Heaven Is A Lie’, it’s all good from here, and although each song has a different intro, everything blends together and becomes incredibly contrived. It’s definitely worth a listen if you’re into heavier rock bands, but unfortunately doesn’t really offer anything that you wouldn’t have heard a million times before.

The gem of this album is the beautiful ‘Rosa & THE Ocean Blue’, coming in at the end it serves to justify the very existence of the twelve tracks which came before. Acoustic tracks always sit well with me but this one has a particular charm, unfortunately though it is just an acoustic version of exactly what the band have been thrashing out for the rest of the album on electric guitars, the melody comes through more here but that’s about it. It’s unfortunate that the generic acoustic song tagged at the end is the highlight of this album, but it’s the only song which offers anything more than a heavy rock barrage, of course if that’s your thing then you’re going to love Slaves To Gravity, but it all reeks of so many other bands and songs from the past ten years.