EP & Demo Reviews: Review of 8 Ball Groove - Three track demo (Voice, Kid, Better Times)

by Michael Freeman

I'm a bit undecided about these guys, kind of like the way they must feel about their musical direction. Mixed in with the nu-metal riffing and rapping we get to hear funk, ska, dub, and even some bongo drums and scat vocals - basically anything with a groove, so the name is definitely well chosen (Maybe all the members are bald?).

Voice seems to be a warm-up track, and isn't so much verse, chorus, verse, chorus - more like melodic chorus, nu-metal chorus, melodic chorus, nu-metal chorus. It's kind of cool though, with vocals reminiscent of Ian Watkins and Karl Middleton. Fortunately, both Kid and Better Times have verses, although Kid's laidback dub guitars for the verse don't go quite as well with the nu-metal tale of abuse being told as the heavier chorus does. Overall, Better Times is the best (and so really should have been put first in my opinion) -there's some ska, a bit of reggae, and I was sure I heard a Hammond organ.

On the whole, this lot show promise. They just need to mesh their influences a bit better, rather than just switching between styles whenever they need to, and realise that you can do a bit more with choruses than repeating the same line 5 or 6 times.