A Bleak Future…

The Red Bull Bedroom Jam. A competition where several acts upload videos to a website for a judge to decide if it’s allowed through to the voting stage, where the public then vote for their favourite band. Sounds a bit like the X-Factor doesn’t it? It’s not really, when you look at it from face value, but the deeper you dig into the fundamentals of the whole thing, the more you see those abstract familiarities.

I’m not really here to talk about such accusations, as it doesn’t really concern me. What does concern me is the lack of creativity that this competition so finely highlights amongst the popular local bands of today. One quick peak at the influences listed by the top ten bands (at time of writing) and you see familiar names cropping up, most notably A Day To Remember and Bring Me The Horizon, two bands who seem to be creating quite a buzz at the moment. It really worries me that a band can cite A Day To Remember as an influence, given the fact that the band haven’t really created anything original themselves.

Currently leading the charts are Aberdeen’s Autumn In Disguise, a band who’s EP I enjoyed and critiqued quite well sometime ago. The Aberdonians are good at what they do, fusing the accessibility of modern pop punk with more crunching riffs, but it’s certainly not original, not by a long shot. Influences from Four Year Strong, Set Your Goals and yes, you guessed it, A Day To Remember can all be found littered throughout the bands EP and the reason AID find themselves at the top of the pack is down to the fact they can write catchy hooks similar to those aforementioned influences.

It gets worse the further you move down the chart unfortunately. Another ADTR identikit band can be found in The Few That Remain. They’ve only been on the go for four months and it really shows in the song writing, because it’s all been done before. South of Summer try to mix things up with the Biffy-esque Scottish vocal but yet again, the underlying music is lifted from those who do it better. It never ends.

If this doesn’t shatter your faith in what the future holds for heavy British music, then go check out the awful Never A Hero. These lads failed to notice Nu-Metal going out of fashion over ten years ago which kind of makes it original compared to the majority of acts here, but the fact a wet fart would sound more entertaining doesn’t bode well for them either. Our friends in A Day Overdue contribute to the charts but it pains me to say that the song is appalling. The production in the drums just shits all over the track and it’s hard to take your ears attention off of how awful those drums actually sound. The Ocean Between Us, Thousand Autumn’s, the list of terrible music just goes on and on.

I must add that my criticism isn’t out of disdain for the bands. Some of these guys listed are showing some potential, and it would be unfair for me to not point that out. However, what hurts the most is that you, the audience, are allowing this to happen. The modern youthful audience just don’t bother looking for anything original to listen to, nor do they expect anything original from the bands they dig. This can be seen in the chart occupiers influences. Over half are influenced by a band who have gained success from riding on the coattails of a previously successful sound. They don’t make music, they just recycle music. What we see here is the beginning of a God awful cycle where the next generation further recycle the sound of their influences and you start to ask yourself how long this will go on for. It’ll go on until the young grow bored of the current flavour of the week and start to seek something new. There are a lot of good bands out there of similar ages to the batch seen in this competition who are fighting to be heard with unique sounds, and they end up giving up because they are drowned out by the mass sound of bullshit.

If you’re in a band and you are reading this, you will probably know if you’re guilty of the accusations above. We can summarise this blog up in one simple sentence which holds more weight than the entire blog itself. This ADTR inspired sound of pop punk/hardcore is this generation’s nu-metal. We all know what happened to that genre. Until then, I’ll continue supporting the bands who strive to push out the boat rather than jumping on it until it eventually sinks.