Benzos try their hand at the indie rock scene with their debut Morning Stanzas, set to be released in May, which is a heaping helping of post Radiohead rock sprinkled with a kick of ingenuity and rolled up then kneaded into a sleekly engineered tour de force and baked until golden brown. 

This New York-based, five piece outfit derive from a rather eclectic mix of musical styles, ranging from underground drum n’ bass and house music to electronic music and plain old rock n’ roll. According to members of the band, the vision was to create something “that would combine a DJ element of cross-fading pieces of music with more traditional rock musical forms, to create a more viscerally powerful rock experience.”

Uh, yeah, what he said. Whatever they meant by that statement, they apparently have succeeded. While not quite the diverse musical spattering of their past, Benzos has come together to make rock music that fans of the Doves, Pink Floyd, and, yes, Radiohead, should welcome warmly. While one can easily listen to this album and pick out pieces of the aforementioned bands with ease, that doesn’t mean that Benzos is a farce and a rip-off. Far from it. In fact, Morning Stanzas serves as a cerebral injection of genuine, elegant songwriting and aural shock therapy treatment. 

Instruments are played to perfection and vocals float somewhere inside your subconscious, leaving you with a hypnotized feeling of satisfying elation. Benzos creates the kind of music that makes you stop and ask yourself, “Could I be any more cool listening to this music? I’ve got to go tell all my buddies about what great taste in music I have.” It’s the kind of music that you crank to glass-shattering decibels in your car stereo, bobbing your head up and down while stopped at a red light, onlookers gazing, caring not that you probably look really stupid. 

I guess that whole “viscerally powerful rock experience” thing worked and they really did know what they were talking about. Listening to Morning Stanzas is like a pothole that you’ve been driving over for months on your daily commute, only to realize one day that it’s been freshly filled. It makes you almost shout out loud, “Wow! What a difference!” 
 

• Listen to samples and Purchase this CD online

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