Sometimes I forget that there's more to music than a bunch of loud angry bastards screaming at Satan and any other old Gods that will grant favours for the simple sacrifice of a small living thing. That's right, sacrificing the neighbours cats to appease Gol-goroth is not the only way to make music (although I still find that hard to believe).

So it is with great surprise and uncertainty that I dove into the new E.P from DARK STARES, a Rock band from the darkest bowels of St. Albans here in the UK.

At first, my ears were horrified at the lack of blast beats and the seeming absence of any kind of blood lust; surely they must have been devoured by the God of the black stone long ago! Before long, my brain was ignited with past memories of music from my younger years, before the madness came.  I remembered bands like QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE and MUSE being pretty enjoyable to listen to, even without the sacrifices.

The album opens with a familiar drawl and it has all the smoky textures of some seedy bar in the southern states of the USA. The vocals are fairly reminiscent of bands like KASABIAN or one of the other Brit-Rock bands that surfaced in the last decade. A slow pace and relatively minimal instrumental work, serve to create the level of ambience that fans of the band have come to know and love, but as a newcomer to them, it fails to make my juices flow. I like the themes employed through the E.P and it feels like they could really be pushed toward something great, maybe along the lines of some kind of bastard child borne of CLUTCH and QOTSA. Sadly though, it misses this mark for the most part. Whilst it has all the desert feels of the "Rated R" album, there is just something missing that I can't quite put my finger on (perhaps balls?). I think it fundamentally falls down the vocal style. Miles Howell clearly has a good voice but it is stuck in some distant limbo between smoky stoner and emotionless whine.

For anyone looking to get themselves balls deep in melancholy Brit-Rock, then this is going to be just the ticket. There is apathy by the bag load and someone has quite clearly given the vocalist a big bag of ketamine before he got into the studio. For anyone else, this probably won't hit the mark sadly, but you could always drop it into a volcano and ask a favour from the Forgotten Old One.<