BisonSound - BisonSound

​BisonSound

​BisonSound
self-released; 2016

3.3 out of 5

By Jamie Funk

​Steve Matichuk (guitar/vocals), Eric Pattee (drums) and Kelvin Liu (bass) are the three members of the rock band BisonSound. Their debut self-titled full-length BisonSound revolves around distortion, power chords and a lot of attitude. The songs are pretty straight forward and don’t need a whole lot of explanation. There isn’t much experimentation or many defining qualities that would make you immediately recognize it as a BisonSound song. 

The band is proud of the fact that the album was completely DIY and I don’t blame them. They did a decent job. That being said it still has the hallmarks that separates something recorded in a studio with a seasoned engineer and something bands usually can produce themselves. The most glaring issue were the vocals, which were in desperate need of proper compression. Sometimes the vocals were too buried in the mix and other times they were too loud.

That’s my only real criticism about the aesthetics issues. Other than that the songs are gritty, visceral and delivered exactly how rock is supposed to be served. Like Guided By Voices a lot of the songs end up bleeding into each other. The album has slight highs and lulls but overall is pretty consistent in terms of songwriting. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to pick some highlights I would go with “I Remember,” “Shark 2” (because it sounded like Tourettes by Nirvana) and “Boom.”

Overall, this was an enjoyable album but it was slightly trying to get through in one sitting. There are twelve songs of which almost all are four to five minutes. I though a majority of the songs could have been wrapped up between two and three minutes. The songs were immediate and visceral like punk rock but after the fourth song some of the melodies started to lose their impact. 

I think BisonSound is well on their way to becoming a formidable threat but still have some tweaking to do. The album shows potential from a band that has some innate talent.

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