These four guys – three of whom have played together in various bands during the past 18 years, most notably the San Francisco Bay-area metal outfit D'Angelo – make plodding doom-turned-AOR rock 'n' roll. Seriously.
On Press' self-titled CD, songs like "Nowhere to Run" and "Thirty Days" could move arenas, while "Blood Red Scream" and "Winds of War" are more aggressive alternative-metal tunes. Vocalist Rob Bonstin sounds shaky on a few tracks, and when the band decides to give its music some breathing room – as on "Sunday," which also features some subtle keyboard work – Press adds a new dimension to its sound that's worth exploring on the next record. Some of the lyrics, particularly on "Alone" and "The Lock" boast religious imagery, but its subtle and masked by a mix that sometimes make Bonstin's words inaudible.
This thing is available from the always-wonderful, get-lost-for-hours on-line store CD Baby, but if you bumped into it while scrolling for other discs, you might easily dismiss it because of the band's blah name and its ugly cover art. Neither do this band justice.
Track Listing:
1) Blood Red Scream
2) Alone
3) FTM
4) Three
5) Nowhere to Run
6) Sunday
7) The Lock
8) Thirty Days
9) XI
10) The Architect
11) Winds of War
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