Rival Boys – Life Of Worry
It’s rather unfortunate that there aren’t too many standard hard rock bands out there today. Too many bands are focusing on fusing genres and adding as many instruments as possible, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but some times its good to get back to basics. Well luckily there is a band in Toronto doing just that: The Rival Boys.
The Rival Boys first EP Life of Worry is a fantastic return to the straightforward rock, while still keeping it interesting and fresh. Their combination of riff based guitar along with a steady driving drum beats overtop soulful vocals works insanely well. The vocals stand out beautifully through the lo-fi rocky guitar with the drums pushing everything along. Although the EP has only five tracks Life Of Worry does a good job at showing each one of these aspects beautifully, especially on tracks like Sober and Single and A Good Man.
The EP has a fantastic flow begging with a steady strong song Lonely Heart, pushing harder with Sober and Single. The EP then rises with A Good Man, eventually climaxing with the slower and beautiful Construction Work and ending perfectly with the title track Life of Worry. It brings you in, rises you up, kicks your ass then hugs you goodbye. The only real complaint I can find is after seeing these guys live it’s a little disappointing that some of their faster dirtier songs were left out of the album, yet at the same time it would disrupt the flow of the album.
The entire EP can be streamed on their Myspace, along with Black Mold (a track that shows the dirtier faster songs I mentioned earlier. However The Best place to pick up one of the EPs would be to check out one of their shows. They will be at Lee’s Palace on April 9th, at The Pound in Montreal on May 7th, and at The Horseshoe in Toronto on May 12th. I would highly recommend checking out one of the shows to see how amazing three-piece band can be.
The Rival Boys – Sober Single
The Rival Boys – A Good Man
The Rival Boys – Construction Work
Tags: EP