ROCKET REVIEW: SONS OF POSEIDON “North American Metal” (CD)

Fargo, North Dakota’s hard rock music scene is home to one of heavy metal’s best kept secrets with SONS OF POSEIDON. SOP released at the end of 2006 its latest CD entitled “North American Metal” off Ravnum Records.

What I find most appealing about this latest effort is that SOP are by no means trying to lay claim to be the next Lamb Of God or Killswitch Engage, like everybody else floating along in the volumunous and mostly unoriginal sea of underground acts. They play their hand very close to their chests and keep their form of hard rockin purity, well… fun and simply rollicking, the way it was meant to be from the very inception of rock n roll.

A trio that sounds more fully rounded out on this recording than most symphonic orchestras, the rocking bunch is led by the dynamic and powerfully sounding lead vocalist/guitarist, Carter Evenson and straight out the shoot pull the cork off the proverbial bottle here with the tunes ‘Unjust’, ‘Blind Beware’ and ‘Tug of War’, all very short and sweet with an uncanny ability to just flatout make your heart race and get you to start stomping your foot under the table.

Track four ‘No Way’ starts off with a double-bass mosher from SOP’s skin basher, Crock, ala Judas Priest of old and turns into something cross betwen Motley Crue’s ‘Smoking in The Boys Room’ and AC/DC’s ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’. Hat on bass guitar is known for his out of this world antics during his live shows, demonstrates here that he’s just as good at holding down the low end as anyone in the game today.

‘What I Mean’ kicks off with a purely apocalyptic feel that honestly I didn’t see coming and spins the listener into a world of maple syrup heavy monster riffing and clever breakdown after the next. It’s so refreshing to hear a band that knows what it means to not bog a song down in over production. Korn anyone?

Another great example of this band’s ability to do just that is the lighter beer sipper, ‘Greed’, that completely takes you back to the great times of the 80’s metal world as if you have literally been beamed back through the future and are now sitting at FM Station watching Ratt throw it down with eyeliner and lipstick smudged and dripping down all their horny faces.

Rounding it all out with more than enough at the end to deliver the bang for your buck are the grooving and smashed-up by a proverbial cyclone ‘Think Again’, ‘The Other Lies’ and ‘No Guarantee’.

But what blew me back in my chair the most in completing this review was what the band saved for last with ‘The Lowdown (Downlow)’, which is clearly the best track out of all of them because it just feels like that kind of song pulled out as the ace card at set’s end that would easily be able to get any fatigued and slobberly drunken club crowd headbanging with devoted vigor while throwing up their hand at the bartender for “One more round, please!”.

Again, this is not a band trying to be Dimmu Borgir version 3.0. This is quite possibly America’s modern developing answer to AC/DC. Now we just need to wait and see what these guys come up with as an encore to an album that has set the bar high for themselves in concern with all future SOP offerings.