Return to heavy rock with Blystre

Blystre has kind of a fuzzy rock sort-of sound, heavy on the bass and guitar work reminiscent of Eddie Van Halen in his more calm moments. The lead vocalist has a rusty voice in an attempt at an Eddie Vedder homage, I suppose. But it works very well with what the group’s doing overall on its album “Essence of Enlightenment.”

In “Air You Breathe,” the opening track of the album, there’s this nice dynamic shift in the middle of the song with solo drums beating to the lead vocalist’s words before the whole band comes back in triumphantly at the repeating chorus, making for a great formula rock song with a catchy hook and mesmerizing instrumentals!

Over the fuzzy sound of the band, it is hard to make out the lyrics, or maybe that was the intention. In “Child’s Cry,” I was able to make out: “My own passionate heart” twice and “cry child cry” also twice in the song. So there’s some lyrics for you.

“Mr. Nice Guy” reminds me of late ’80s-early ’90s with heavy metal all over the place. I can just hear something like this thumping from my older brother’s room when we were kids. He was into all those hair bands, like Ratt and Poison or bands like KingsX and KISS. Blystre could definitely have fit right into that category. The vocalist sings: “Mr. Nice Guy … she wants you. She wants you, yeah!”

Good times!

Check out a sample of Blystre at blystre.com.

Josh Cole is a local musician and CD connoisseur. For a possible review of a new release, e-mail Cole at lettersfromthevoid@yahoo.com or at Myspace.com/familiarwalls.