ManBREAK
Guitars and politics have always made strong bedfellows:
Woody Guthrie. Bob Dylan. John Lennon. The Sex Pistols. All have
strung a six-string when they've gone shooting against established order.
Into this phalanx steps ManBREAK, Liverpool, England's latest enlistment
to the world of rock and roll. On their major-label debut, Come and
See, the quintet unload an arsenal of politically charged rock mixed
with pop, hip-hop, and a delicate pair of piano ballads. And like the work
of their aforementioned predecessors, you can still get into the music,
even if you can't deal with the message.
"It has to work as a piece of entertainment for three or four minutes,"
concedes Swindelli, the band's charismatically covert singer/songwriter
(all of the band members have adopted aliases). "The lyrics are
subordinate to that."
Whether or not the lyrics match your political handbag, pop-rock
enthusiasts will find it hard to resist ManBREAK's incediary riffs and
stimulating melodies. Just what inspired this mutiny against popular
music's complacency? "Rock and roll taught me how to think for meself,"
Swindelli flatly states. "By the very act of wanting to be in a band and
be a musician you have to reject some of the basic tenets that I was
brought up with, like, 'only special people do things like that.' Really
it's a question of doing it."
Helping him along is guitarist and occasional writing partner Snaykee,
who creates a cataclysmic urban soundscape using, among other guitarists,
a pair of Patrick Eggle New York standards and a Les Paul custom, which he
plays through a Marshall 6100 30th Anniversary Series amp and a Boss
digital delay. The wild sirens and ground-zero blasts peppering Come
and See, also emanate from Snaykee's guitar, the result a generous
electronic treatment from producer Stephen Hague.
Offers Swindelli, "We don't say, 'This is our sound and that's it.'
We push the boundaries." In every conceivable way.
-Written by
Christopher Scapelliti; from Guitar
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