CD REVIEW: Knotted Cord “Heavy Minerals”

            If there are two things that stump me most when reviewing music, they are instrumental bands and female fronted bands.   Though Knotted Cord has sparse vocals throughout “Heavy Minerals”, it has at least afforded me the pleasure of not having to make a reference to The Cranberries. 

            “Heavy Minerals” starts off hard with a somewhat Tell-Tale Heart drum beat.  The ever present bass guitar makes this music bass heavy for me, but not in the hip hop way.   There also appears to be some looping, though I will admit that after all of these years I’m still not 100% certain how to recognize looping. 

            I spent a lot of time with these songs wondering if they should be the soundtrack to a video game or a movie.  They are not 8bit or chiptune, but they do have some feel to them where they could be playing while you’re trying to save the galaxy by overthrowing an evil dictator. 

            Another unfortunate aspect that I came to with this music is that it sometimes reminds me of old WWE theme songs, circa the late 1990’s when characters like Gangrel were present.  I realize that I have made this comparison in other songs before though, I specifically recall saying it in a review for The Illegal Wiretaps, so it can’t be all that unfortunate because they are one of my favorite bands.

            Alas, I began to wonder if maybe this was the soundtrack to a movie based on a video game.  I started to think and remembered the Resident Evil movies.  I thought of other movies based upon video games.   I decided that was not as flattering of a remark after all and let it rest.

            “Heavy Minerals” ends where it begins- with the same industrial type drum beat of doom.  I always seem to press too many buttons on the computer (I love Linux but can’t stand the Rhythmbox Music Player) so I kept checking to make sure I didn’t hit repeat.  But, no, the last song does bring us full circle and that makes for quite the fitting end.

http://knottedcord.bandcamp.com/album/heavy-minerals
$7 to Download // Free to Stream