CD Review: The Riot

The Riot’s debut album, “Carry Us To The Sea,” can be described in no other way than being truly on the frontier.

Music is everywhere, all around us, all the time, and I’ll say it, I don’t like everything I hear.

Neither does anyone else.

We all have our preferences.

Even more to the point, being on the frontier musically is when your sound is like very little else, a sound that cannot be easily compared to another band or artist.

This is usually the kind of music the big corporate record companies tend to shy away from signing or promoting because they find their “new” sound incompatible with their standard marketing structure.

The Riot is a head on collision with the entire concept of music labeling, since they take their sound to surprisingly fresh and original depths that would make one hard pressed to compare, especially to what’s being played on mainstream radio.

“Carry Us To The Sea” opens with an instrumental called “Exercises in Black and White,” an appropriate title I suppose, since it is just that: Musical distortions, bad dreams and sorrowful choruses wrapped up in keyboards, drums and guitars.

“Little Hands Grasping” is sinisterly gothic with industrial electronic rhythms with the talents of Evan Larrecou on drums, John Swanson on keyboards/electronics, Kenny Moss on guitars, and Laila O’Sullivan on lead vocals.

“Time Travel” is fast paced, like the rest of the songs tend to be though each in their on unique ways. They have a way of speeding right along, only to drop off to just keyboards or voice while a pulsing beat holds it all together.

“Toast” starts off real jazzy with drums and piano complementing each other well, and then the pounding chaos comes in with time changes and mood shifts, a truly quasi-electric anxiety attack.

“City Lights” is no break from the pace. Laila screams in the few lyrics that I can actually make out in all of the impending lovely and beautiful chaos: “Hold me down, hold me down/ need to feel my feet on solid ground/ before I disappear completely/ through the city lights.” It has these progressive and trippy sound affects that go well with fast drums.

“Seascape” has got to be “the hit” on this album. They might think so too.

If you go to their MySpace page at Myspace.com/theriotak, the first track you’d hear would be this one. The keyboard intro is so immediately catchy, you’ll find yourself humming it as it rings in your head for hours.

“(Underground)” has a few more lyrics I was able to make out that I thought were worth quoting: “I just wanted to begin/ I just wanted to transcend/ I just want to soak it all in, pour it all over me.” Then there’s a nice rest from the chaos and it goes into an interlude with just drums and piano, adding another piano onto another.

The Riot is a band, and a sound, that transcends many styles and genres, containing elements of many different, yet familiar influences, though the overall originality of their sound makes you lost for words when you are pressed to compare them to anything you’ve heard before.

They are quiet and melodic.

They are also a full pounding force to be reckoned with.

The Riot’s “Carry Us To The Sea” is a slow then fast building wall of sound with very genuine outbursts of true anguish, or maybe even triumph.

I’ll call it frontier music.