EP REVIEW: Sandness – Enter Please

The press release for this one actually starts out “For fans of Motionless Def Leppard, H.E.A.T., Reckless Love” Now really what does that mean? What is a Motionless Def Leppard? and if there’s just a missing comma then I have no idea who Motionless is…

The band then goes on to say ““Alive & Kickin’ was the first song that we wrote after the release of our third album and we liked it so much we decided to release immediately instead of waiting for the rest of the tracks for the fourth album to be ready. With this song we decided to experiment a little with the sound of the synth, using it as the main riff. The lyrics talk about a very passionate love story and the melody is one of those that can get stuck in your head for days. In our eyes, this song is like the missing link between London and the love power ballad that we haven’t written yet”

What that means is that you get an EP with one new track, two covers and three live tunes. Not only that the band are going to cover the almost untouchable T-Rex… this should be interesting…

The one new track here ‘Alive and Kickin” is a modern melodic Pop Rocker with a lispy vocal and some pretty prominent synth, it’s nice enough, light and breezy, but I’m not sure its a strong enough track to hang an entire EP on. It’s not a lot like Def Leppard, not really much like H.E.A.T. but I guess it does recall Reckless Love in their most sugary Euro Pop excesses. You can watch the Lyric Video HERE.

I’ll be totally honest –  don’t like the cover of ‘Get It On’ at all, and with the comment “our intent is to show how music from the past can still be relevant and make you have a good time in the present” is a strange one to make about sounds of the past when you’ve released three pretty much straight up 80’s Sleaze Rock albums. But ‘Get it On’ is lacking excitement for me, the original sounds far more ‘full’ than this rather ‘by numbers’ cover which seems to sap the sexiness and excitement out of the track (mind you I think only Bang Tango ever managed to capture T-Rex for me). At least the other cover – Elton John’s ‘Saturday Night’s Alright’ has a bit more life to it and injects a bit of their own style.

What saves this EP though and makes it well worth a listen is the ‘live ‘material, or as the band say “we want people to know what a Sandness live concert sounds like”. And by the sound of the three tracks here as a live band they sound great. The excitement is there in their own work, there’s an edge and the band feel and sound like one you’d like to get in front of.

The three live tracks, all from their latest release do really showcase their 80’s rock feel – ‘Tyger Bite’ is nice and sleazy, whilst ‘London’ more like Reckless Love, and closer ‘Tell Me Tell Me’ really does owe a lot to a certain Poison song. But it’s good solid stuff even if I’m not entirely convinced by the vocals on the lighter material. If I’m honest I’d have preferred a live EP based on what I’m hearing here and whilst ‘London’ hints at a poppier direction, new track ‘Alive and Kickin” seems to confirm that’s the way they’re heading.