Five Bolt Main - Venting Review
by Dan Upton
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Y'know, I liked Flaw, when they released their major label debut Through The Eyes back in 2001. Sure, that was when nu-metal, grunge, and post-Black Album Metallica were about the heaviest things I was even aware of, but even so I still like Chris Volz's voice and generally consider Flaw to be one of the upper-tier bands of their genre. In particular, they had more interesting guitar, bass, and drum parts, more dynamics, and even the ability to write more ballad-style material like "My Letter." Yeah, that's nice, you're thinking, but the review title says this is supposed to be for Five Bolt Main's Venting... what's the big deal? Let's clear that up; for the uninitiated, Five Bolt Main is Chris Volz's new band post-Flaw, and despite Chris being the only member in common, there's a certain similarity in the style. While this could have been good, it turns out that it's pretty much a poor ripoff of Flaw's original style along with a blending back into the more boring nu-metal acts. This CD is actually difficult to make it through, and not in a good way. Some technically complex CDs are difficult to listen to just because it's hard to digest everything that's happening; the case of Venting is just that it's incredibly uninteresting. Chris is still doing fairly well in the lyric-writing department, but his delivery and melody-writing have fallen off, and the music is pretty much just one big rehash after another. To be fair, there are a few salvageable parts of this release; there are a few catchy spots on songs like "Pathetic" and "Walk In Line," and the ballad "Broken Compass" shows glimmers of what he's capable of. Unfortunately, the rest of the CD falls off pretty quickly and even fans of the style will probably not find much to hold their attention beyond a couple of spins. If you're into this type of stuff, leave this CD alone and go dig up a copy of Through the Eyes instead.
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Five Bolt Main - Venting Label:Sixthman Records Rating:
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