Brigade have set their sights high with this, their second album. The follow-up to 2006’s ‘Lights’ aspires to catapult Brigade away from the band who are finding their way, and establish them firmly as a band who have arrived. It’s always a bold move to take on something bigger, but this is the icing on the cake for Brigade; making music is the love, making it big is the dream.
It’s hard to not get immediately drawn in, the album is chocked full of enormous rock songs. There’s enough here on face value to make them instantly addictive. Opener ‘What Are You Waiting For?’ riffs into life in a big way and grabs you by the throat, pulling you in on the promise of the chanty chorus. The idea is quickly becoming apparent, single ‘Pilot’ is just as big and just as addictive in all the right places. There is unfortunately an element of playing it safe, the feeling that Brigade know exactly what they should do and how they should make the songs sound, it’s an unfortunate conception but the opening songs do nothing to dissuade it.
Thankfully, it’s not all rock by numbers, ‘Together Apart’ is dynamically sound and brings about one of the biggest and best choruses this band have ever written. ‘Res Head’ is aggressive and in your face, much more than the first few songs, at this point the diversity Brigade offer is hard to ignore. In parts they remind of InMe, Muse and, dare I say it Fightstar. ‘Stunning’ is just that, it’s hard to see why this wasn’t chosen as the first chorus, for catchiness it’s unrivalled and is huge. Brigade’s progression from a band finding their feet on their previous album to fully-fledged rock band is obvious. That’s where it all starts to go down hill.
As big as the entire album is it does fail to continue in the momentum developing within the opening five tracks, although ‘Four Kids To A Glockenspiel’ does reiterate their feel for dynamic. The complex arrangement of melodies in the chorus, topped with lush guitar lines is just glorious, it’s hard to make a comparison. It’s the sort of melodic moment which just makes you smile, with no real explanation other than it’s that good. ‘Shortcuts’ is another huge beast of a song, as is ‘Vice To Versa’, but their not offering what was making the earlier songs stand out. ‘Boundaries’ is note worthy, but only for the feel that it is more epic than anything which came before.
That’s unfortunately it, Brigade seem to have written with these songs with a certain sound in mind, a formula perhaps. In doing so they do manage to exceed expectations on a few songs, where at one point it promises to be something amazing and epic, it eventually fizzles out and just drifts off into obscurity. Some of the tracks would make for an amazing EP, but overall as an album the high points are too far above the lows to make it justifiable, the better songs almost feel like an accident. Brigade will find themselves emerging into something more, but their not going to set the world alight.
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Brigade - Pilot (single)
| Reviews 
Brigade - Come Morning We Fight
