Oddzar

Artist: Oddzar
Label: Dcide Records
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 605337001227
EAN: 0605337001227
ASIN: B0002T7ZI4

Release Date: 2004-09-14

Oddzar

Related Categories:

General

| Rock | Styles | Music

Pop Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

Tracks:

More From You
Crutch
Until It Does
El Cajon Pass
Spinning Disc
Spell
Reborn
Tide, The
Suckacaster
Ante Meridiem
Abandoned Road

Album Description

Heavy, dynamic, melodic, and intense gravity-bending rock. "Our music emanates auras of frustration, angst, beauty, sadness, disgust, hope, confusion, and anger," says singer Russ Eckell. "We address rejection and betrayal and wind up the tension until something snaps like a broken neck."

Customer Reviews:

Greg Loman is one of today most kick*ss guitarist!.......2006-07-16

Oddzar is one of the best "non-mainstream" bands. By the way Greg, if you reading this, it still burns! 1st fret, 5th fret, 3rd fret!

The lost art of subtlety.......2006-05-26

This is not a band that will absolutely blow your mind with inventive, super-original music the likes of which no one has ever heard before. What they will do for you is reinforce and reiterate a fact that rock fans seem to periodically forget (myself included): just because a band isn't out to totally reinvent the world, doesn't mean their music is meaningless and vapid.

Sharing musical direction with hard rock legends like Nothingface, Poison The Well, and Project 86 certainly isn't anything to sneer at either. These guys definitely know how to rock. But the finest moments on this album come when they slow down a bit and really let the songs flesh themselves out. Songs like "El Cajon Pass" and "Suckacaster" take the listener on a journey through passionate, mournful soundscapes that manage to keep the audience intrigued not through ridiculous time and tempo changes or blast beats and spastic screams, but through subtle modifications and additions. The final minute of "El Cajon Pass" is an excellent example, giving the listener a lesson in how to make a riff tenfold heavier by only adding a single strummed chord.

Each member of the band has a few standout moments (the bass on "Spell", the frantic drumming during the bridge in "Reborn" the delicate-to-teutonic riffing on "Crutch") but the real link to the audience comes from the vocals, which is as it should be with any clean-sung rock album. Russ has a very distinctive voice that took some time for me to get used to. It almost sounds unpracticed in its delivery, but he never misses a note. He's not my all time favorite vocalist, but it gives the songs an immediately recognizable quality that I usually reserve for vocalists the likes of Eddie Vedder and Maynard James Keenan. Where he really shines, though, is in the layering. Harmonies are used fleetingly on this cd and to stunning effect. Instead of turning every chorus into a hooky sing-along, they are used to accentuate and deepen the turning point or bridge of each song. This strategic placement makes it so these moments hit the listener very hard. Right at the moment where I start to get bored with the verse-chorus exchange in "Suckacaster" the tempo drops and Russ comes in with 30 seconds of vocal work that can only be described as haunting. From there the song explodes into a humongous build that finishes strong. Suddenly I'm not at all bored with the song. In fact, most of the time I find myself hitting repeat and listening to it 3 or 4 more times just to remind myself how they managed to do that.

In recent years, I've found myself being drawn into heavier and faster and more dynamic bands (Between The Buried And Me, Dillinger Escape Plan, Blood Has Been Shed, etc.) and because of this, my appreciation of straight-up rock music has withered. It just doesn't hold my attention. Oddzar are one of the exceptions to this rule. They are an example of a band who, instead of finding a gimmick to exploit or a sugar-daddy record label to ride, have learned to concentrate on the song-writing. That alone is enough to keep me listening for a good long time.

Standout Tracks:
Crutch
Until It Does
El Cajon Pass
The Tide
Suckacaster

Music Album:

Music Album

Music Album

Music CD

Hitting His Stride ~ Chuck Folds

Cannonball in Japan ~ Cannonball Adderley

Bouncing with Mr. A.T. ~ Steve Grossman

With Strings ~ Harumi Miyako

Rockin' in Rhythm ~ Duke Ellington

Sembra Ieri ~ Edoardo Bennato

Le Chanteur Malheureux ~ Claude Fran%C3%A7ois

Sabadabada: Arquivo Warner ~ Erlon Chaves, Sua Orquestra

Porte Des Lilas ~ Billy Nenciolo

Ravine ~ Faubour de Boignard