Auckland-based grungy metallophiles The Symphony of Screams return to cleanse our jaded ears.
As you brace yourself for the aural mugging that is Radio Candy, it’s helpful to think of TSOS as the dentist you see once a year: It might hurt a bit, but he’s your best pal when you walk out of the surgery sans toothache. Now open wide and say AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!
Support gigs with Ozzy Osbourne, Poison, Kiss, Lordi and Whitesnake attest to
the power that TSOS bring to the stage, and guitarist/vocalist Te Matera Smith
says that a prime focus in the making of Radio Candy was to authentically
translate that energy in the studio. “We didn't set out with any conscious
direction, just what ever flowed through us when jamming/writing. And
that’s how we create, as a group, bringing individual ideas and
working on them together without ego ‘till it feels and sounds like a TSOS
record, and for us this one’s the best yet."
That inimitable touchstone of metalness, Kerrang! magazine, had only effusive
praise for the band’s 2011 debut release, Heed to the Voices, calling TSOS
‘NZ Napalm [who] hammer it home all the way’. Like any group of musicians
for whom market share is a laughably distant second to musical integrity, as a
sophomore effort Radio Candy is an evolution that coalesces the band’s desire
to be more than a bunch of fashion-reactive yes men.
“We don’t make music to please anyone but ourselves, although I must admit,
it feels good when someone else ‘gets it’ too.”
To torture yet another analogy: TSOS as a musical Jamie Oliver, on a mission
to eradicate the uniformly grey sonic
stodge that the bearded lunch ladies of pop keep trying to make us digest.