This self-financed four track EP can be ordered from the band's website at no charge.
Brighton's A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION describe themselves as "experimental". But I'd say that was pushing it. I mean, the whole of life is experimental if you want to describe it that way, as we blunder from one random stab at making sense to another. The kind of experimentation we have here is a kind of blinking into the light of musical diversity after long years buried in the fellowship of the arcane metal community and its kindred. A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION are pretty OK, but they will appear to be distinctively special only to the denizens of Raw Nerve Promotions who know in their bones that Sepultura and Meshuggaha are… like … totally not the same.
So lets calm down and forget the choking fumes and blinking lights of music's R&D Department. You can switch off the radar and put the geek specs back in their case. What do we actually have in the here and now?
Four tracks. Two heavy rock and two electro rock. And not badly done at all. Lead in and lead out tracks "4th July" and "Cair Paravel" are jugger jugger chords, fat bass and drums and ghoulishly distorted vocals (All of Ross Shepherd's vocals are distorted). Mid-programme tracks two and three, "Daylight" and Black Eye" are from the mainstream post-rock era, with traces of material other than denim, leather and chains. Maybe some cotton, with tumescent guitar left out in favour of floppier synths. Among the hundreds of bands in this general territory, discerning listeners will nod and say, oh yeh, Tomahawk. Him out of Faith No More. But not so clear, confident and sussed out as that rootstock.
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The best parts of the CD are the jugger-jugger guitar bits – you can really hear the satanic glee as Paul Shepherd thrashes 'em out. And the drummer (Grant Coleman ) really stomps it too. The weakest bits are the dreamy synth lines with generic radio voice samples pasted randomly across the top. This band play the Brighton venues, do some London gigs and have pockets of enthusiastic support. They do their stuff well enough.
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