Piston: Piston

Hailing from the Midlands, that long-held hotbed of British rock and metal, Piston have been a patient bunch of lads as they’ve slowly built towards their self titled debut album. Along the way Rob Angelico (vocals), Jack Edwards and Luke Allat (guitars), Stuart Egan (bass) and Brad Newlands (drums) have already recorded and scrapped an album’s worth of material, so determined have they been to make their first impression a positive, lasting one. As they say, you don’t get a second chance at that first hello, do you?

Fittingly then it’s the explosion of “Dynamite� that lights up this album, the pop of Newlands’ snare beating a path into which a grinding riff that lands somewhere between Zeppelin, Pearl Jam and Skid Row makes its presence felt. With a howling guitar solo that Rob Morello would be proud to call his own adding a different dimension, if there’s one thing clear here, then it’s that Piston don’t really care where they pull their sound from as long as it kicks hard, heavy and straight into your head. There’s a similar attitude in play to that of those rabble rousing Swede’s, Audrey Horne, where an obvious love of 70s rock and 80s lifestyles are informed by the music that was making it big back when these lads were growing up. In many ways this is always how it should have been, “Rainmaker� having as much to do with a KISS chorus as it does Angus Young riffing out a “Shakedown�, all while sliding down the Mother Love Bone. After all, good rock music is good rock music and before we all pigeon holed every band into the most miniscule of sub-sub-sub-genre boxes, that’s exactly how it was.

An innate looseness undoubtedly informs the sound of “Go Now�, which is so gritty that you’ll be pulling gravel from your knees as they smart and sting through this song’s slow intent, whereas “Leave If You Dare� adds a Southern flavour into a warming bourbon smoothness. Angelico is an engaging presence steering the songs from behind the mic, what with his willingness to cajole and caress as he howls with the best. When he’s combined to the rock solid grooves gyrated by Edwards, Allat and Egan, what really strikes you about these cuts and the likes of the more overtly 80s meets 90s inflected swirl of “Into The Night�, is the believability of it all. In all honesty the stunning standard of this album at its best isn’t quite maintained across the full ten tracks on show, while the two remixed (by Romesh Dodangoda (Motorhead, Bring Me The Horizon)) outbursts of “Rainmaker� and “One More Day� actually suggest that there could have been a better version of this album had they gone the whole hog and asked him to mastermind the whole thing.

Still, debuts as confident and promising as this don’t come along every day. Although I can’t quite shake off the feeling that there’s going to be much better to come. Piston are, however, mature enough already to be playing the long game. Hopefully they’ll be doing so for many more years to come.

Track Listing
1. DYNAMITE
2. RAINMAKER

3. GO NOW
4. CARRY US HOME
5. ONE MORE DAY
6. BEYOND REPAIR
7. LEAVE IF YOU DARE
8. BLOW IT AWAY
9. LET US RISE
10. INTO THE NIGHT
11. RAINMAKER (remix)
12. ONE MORE DAY (remix)

Added: September 7th 2019
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Piston online
Hits: 761
Language: english

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