UK METAl UNDERGROUND

review www.ukmetalunderground.com
”Quirky and eccentric, but accessible and entertaining nonetheless.”
Quickening...-UKMU

There seems, as always, to be a lot of discussion about what direction the Heavy Metal genre is going to take, or the next trend or revival to make waves with metalheads worldwide. Looking to create their own answers to these pressing questions with their original blend of metal, funk, jazz and pop is one Pin-Up Went Down. The first thing you notice about this album is the way the songs are structured, as in they don’t seem structured so much as the band members seem to have gathered up their favourite genres and thrown them violently into a blender, not bothered to put the lid on, scraped off the resulting mess from the floor and the ceiling and used it to create 342. But this isn’t a criticism of this album; it’s one of its strengths. The near roulette-wheel randomness where the musical influences pop up serve to make this album a much more varied an interesting listen than the endless list of cookie-cutter cack(try saying that after ten pints) that will inevitably pollute any well-established genre of music such as metal. However, despite the varied assortment of styles, there is one solid concrete pillar holding all together: the voice of their singer Asphodel. Effortlessly going from lounge jazz seductive drawl to teen pop princess squeaks to elegant choir worthy vocal melodies in the same song, she seems to put almost no effort into pulling off singing feats that would liquefy the vocal chords of lesser singers. The best part of it is how natural it sounds in relation to the songs. You just don’t question the J-pop anime vocals that suddenly veer off into serious sounding epic female vocals to downtrodden sulky crooning. Asphodel doesn’t seem content with being a jack of all trades, she happily masters them too.

That isn’t to say that the rest of the instrumentation doesn’t match up to the standard set by Asphodel. The guitars, bass, drums keys are all as tight as possible and seem to perfectly set the mood for the song. Which is no easy task seen as the mood of the music changes faster than math-metal time signatures. The only failing on this album is that even the though the musicianship on this album is great in terms of originality-what others acts can flow so freely from funk to sombre piano melodies to death metal in a heartbeat- it does seem to get consistently outshined by Asphodel’s singing on a regular basis throughout this album. It almost seems as if the vocals just reduce the instrumental side of it to mere backing music, which is a shame as all good metal music should be able to stand well enough by itself. But when listening to 342, the listener will end up having too much fun to really notice. The heavy dollops of cross genre influence on this album also have the added advantage of potentially pulling in listeners from outside the metal genre-something that the more abrasive styles of metal have always had difficulty doing. This will inevitably perplex and alienate more closed minded music listeners, but for those looking for an enjoyable and unpredictable respite from endless musical mundanity in the form of bandwagon-hopping clones and unoriginal, horribly clichéd acts, this snazzy little French outfit will have to come well recommended. Even if it might take a few listens to appreciate properly.