New Medicine- Breaking The Model (Imagen Records)

   Let's get one thing straight before I go any further, these guys are not a strict metal band in the old school sense. After listening to this I can't even say they are a hard rock band. Well they are, kind of. New young bands have so many genres of music to pull from that it's no surprise to me to get something like this on my stereo. It's varied in style, too varied for me to like all of it. Music fans tend to be very territorial about the type of music they listen to. Most want meat and potatoes and not a five course meal.

   So according to the all knowing and always 100% accurate Wikipedia the band are hard rock (ok.....sometimes), post grunge (what the hell does this mean? So everyone after 1997 is post grunge then. Dumb) and punk rock (I assume the Green Day type punk and not the real stuff). It's either good music or bad music to me. I would love to know what the band classifies it's sound as.

   I like some of it a lot but don't love all of it. The production is pristine to a fault. The thing just sounds too damn polished. Sometimes little mistakes are good because it shows the human element in the performance. The album opens with a quiet acoustic track All About Me and it's really good with a strong vocal performance from Jake Scherer. This one and Dead Love Song are probably the strongest on the record. Boy Like Me would be big on radio if it got some push behind it, it has one of those choruses you can't get out of your head. The title track and World Class Fuck Up sounds like something blended from Def Leppard and Queen. The band lose me on tracks like Desire Into Gold because I'm not a rap rock guy, just not my cup of tea. Like A Rose is very Garbage sounding but a good song nonetheless.

Bottom line: nice surprise, some good tracks but others that didn't do it for me. Not too long either like a lot of albums out there. Would be interested to see the band in a live setting where I feel the tracks would pack more punch.  

  It's out on August 25th on Imagen Records.

http://www.newmedicinerock.com/

Richie.