Manic

Floor Boards EP

(Suretone)

Record Review by Marcel Feldmar

A little five song introduction from Los Angeles band Manic. The first song explodes out into a dark, angstful, metal-touched rage that pushes and drives and then drops into slow melodics before bursting out into climactic noise. It’s slick and heavy and rock ‘n’ roll, and it kind of reminds me of the LA version of grunge—more glam and less dirt. But that’s pretty much just the first song, with hints of it dropping into the rest of the EP. There are also touches of Thom Yorke-like vocals pushing over heavy piano pop, dark and gloomy but rough and rocking. The dark side of Ben Folds Five, perhaps.

“Leaving Araby” reminds me a little of Canadian band Moist, but pushing with the guitars and rhythm build-up towards a more modern metal sound, and then all of a sudden, the next song, “In A Room On Fire,” pulls into some dark Pink Floyd psychedelic mindwarp space, vocals chanting over waves of sound. The last song moves through a slow intro that pushes into a mellow Nine Inch Nails groove before doing a quiet prog-rock drive into some sort of Muse-influenced freeway slide with a sonic car crash being promised just around the next curve. There is a cohesiveness to the songs, but at the same time they seem to move outwards in different directions, which makes it a little confusing without having the context of a full album to put all the songs into their proper place.