Skrape
Up The Dose
RCA
There’s nothing more delicious than mass-marketed, pre-packaged anger. At least that’s what the tough-looking 16-year-old white kids with dreads who hang around at my local mall seem to think. Well, sometimes you can do okay for yourself just going along with all the other kids, and sometimes you can’t. And other times, things seem to start out okay but eventually someone recognizes that there’s just nothing particularly authentic or the least bit original about your sound, and then you get dropped by your record label. I hate it when that happens.
Up The Dose is Skrape’s second and final release for RCA. For those of you keeping score at home, RCA is also home to Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson. At their best, the guys occasionally rip off some of the less interesting Deftones material or get all whiney and do an acoustic bit that sounds sort of like Staind when they were trying to sound like Alice in Chains. But most of the time, Skrape’s sound is practically indistinguishable from the melodic hard rock churned out by their likeminded mates in Godsmack, Trapt and Ill Nino. It’s formulaic, hook-heavy modern metal where as much input came from RCA’s marketing department as did from the musicians themselves.
Maybe being dropped by their label will inspire some real anger (or remorse?) in these guys, and then they can go out and make a badass independent disc for themselves, something that will help them exorcise those demons. Maybe then, they will show us all what it’s really like to be Skrape. Or at least they’ll turn in a disc that doesn’t sound like the heavy metal equivalent of Kelly Clarkson.
Skrape: http://www.skrape.net/
