Rock Regeneration

Jan24

EP: “State Of Mind” by Greyhaven

on January 24th, 2017 at 21:24

London-based alt-rockers Greyhaven have been establishing themselves on the scene since August 2014, with a debut EP, “The Flood” arriving in early 2015. “State Of Mind” is their second EP and features seven tracks.

Intro track “Sinners” is dreamy; an ethereal guitar segues neatly into track two, “Hexes”. It’s a promising start, with a busy guitar introduction and some nice, upbeat instrumental work. At forty-three seconds, the vocals kick in – growly and thrilling … then it goes back into clean vocals and to be honest, to my ears it sounds a little bit generic.

There is more of the same with “Darkest Hour”, although it has a heavier sound and is altogether much punchier than the tracks that go before it; a much more ballsy effort. The same can be said for “On & On” as it starts with a big sound, although it’s a little disappointing when the clean vocals kick in.

The rest of the EP is perfectly okay, with the stand out track being the bruising “Brother”. I think the acoustic rendition of “The Flood” probably would have been better left off of the track listing; it’s a nice little wind down to the end of the journey, but I would have preferred to see a big finale. Having said that, who doesn’t love a bit of acoustic guitar?

There is nothing wrong with this EP; it has a modern, punchy sound which will no doubt appeal to many people who listen to this sort of music. But that’s the point; this genre (if we must pigeonhole bands into genres) is saturated, completely awash with bands that all sound similar. To elevate themselves above the pack, bands have to be doing it cleaner, bigger and better than the rest. Greyhaven have all of the tools at their disposal, but this EP probably won’t propel them to the top of the pile. What it will do is gain them some more fans so that they can get out and do more live shows and plug away towards a full-length offering.