Tag Archives: nine black alps

#636: Nine Black Alps – Intermission

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‘Intermission’ is the second of two mainly acoustic numbers on Nine Black Alps’ debut Everything Is from 2005. An album that is a proper onslaught of heavy guitars, thrashing drums and Sam Forrest’s growling vocals, ‘Intermission’ and fellow acoustic track ‘Behind Your Eyes’ arrive at points when the momentum has to be brought down a little before picking back up with a rapid change on the next song.

Because I was so into the intensity of the other ten tracks, it took me a while to get into ‘Intermission’. Anything with an acoustic guitar in I just switched off for. This was when I was eleven. But it didn’t take long to realise how good a song it was. The only track on the album not to be recorded in a proper studio – it was instead recorded in Sam Forrest’s flat in Manchester – ‘Intermission’ is a real downer. The main refrain or hook or whatever you want to call it is led by forlorn slide guitars that weep in both headphones. Like a lot of other songs on the album, the lyrics evokes imagery of war and weaponry with a cynical twist to them. ‘Intermission’ is very much anti-war. It details people who carelessly laugh at it when the misery is going down.

The album could easily have ended here. But the band reel you back in again with a raging closer. That’s for another time.

My iPod #564: Nine Black Alps – I Can’t Lose

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‘I Can’t Lose’ is one of the many B-sides Mancunian alternative rock/grungy-type band Nine Blacks Alps made during the sessions for their debut album Everything Is, released in 2005, and appeared on the ‘Just Friends’ single. That album still sounds as good today as it did then as an eleven-year-old. I could possibly write a whole article about how much I like that album, how I got into it etc. etc. That would be for another time.

Everything Is is a perfect twelve song package of fast, biting guitar music. Couldn’t get much better. ‘I Can’t Lose’ is very much in the same vein as the songs on the album and wouldn’t seem out of place had the band decided it to be on the final tracklist, but its production doesn’t give it that heavy feel that is present on so many of the songs that did make it.

Not trying to take anything away from it though, ‘I Can’t Lose’ is still very enjoyable. It’s not meant to be a very heavy song at all. It has a self-deprecating vibe to it which I can’t really explain. I mean, the song’s called ‘I Can’t Lose’ but the song’s narrator mentions how they always lose even if they seem to be at an advantage. Whichever way it’s meant to be taken, it’s all good stuff.

My iPod #498: Nine Black Alps – Headlights

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“Unsatisfied” has barely faded to silence before the crashing cymbals, drum rolls and minor chord guitar vamps begin the frantic “Headlights”, the fifth song on Nine Black Alps’ debut Everything Is.

The track is another one of Nine Black Alps where the lyrics are focused on a person who the narrator always sees or notices and how people react around them. In this case, this character is one who thinks too highly of themselves and thinks they are indestrictible; the narrator knows that he/she isn’t all that but can’t help but notice the dim-witted people who would want do the most tedious of things “stare into static” to gain a piece of this person’s confidence. The narrator has to put their body on the line for…. something that isn’t really revealed or explicitly stated which reinforces the worrying undertone set in the song’s music.

As for the music. Well it’s typical Nine Black Alps stuff. Full throttle guitars and rhythm to the wall and feedback which closes the track off after being buried in the mix for the last chorus.

Very fond of this one.

My iPod #420: Nine Black Alps – Ghost in the City

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“Ghost in the City” closes out Nine Black Alps’ third album “Locked Out from the Inside“; after ten tracks of murky guitars and brutal rhythms, “Ghost” arrives as the slow comedown to bring it all to an end.

Maybe one of the softest Nine Black Alps songs with Sam Forrest’s vulnerable and gentle vocals, “Ghost in the City” also creates an eerie and barren atmosphere helped along by a siren-like wailing that appears at various points throughout and its overall production in that it sounds very natural. For instance, in parts where the guitars stop playing or just by listening to the song’s depressing guitar lick, every sound you hear echoes and reverberates around your headphones. It feels like everything’s moving in slow motion, though you’re right there in the studio with the band while they play the song to you.

Just short of five minutes, “Ghost in the City” carries on the themes of alienation and isolation that are noted to within the album though rather than using those themes to make another headbanger, “Ghost” brings to the forefront how miserable and frustrating feeling alone can be.

My iPod #414: Nine Black Alps – Get Your Guns

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I know mostly all of the lyrics…. I could hum every tune, note and screech the guitar feedback if you indeed wanted me to recite all of “Everything Is” to you. “Everything Is” being the first album by Nine Black Alps, which was released in 2005. I know that album like the back of my hand. IT’S TOO GOOD. Even today, I still feel the same excitement and thrill as I did when I opened that case, inserted the disc and heard that crunching guitar introduction for the very first time.

“Get Your Guns” is the track of which that introduction belongs to, and it is after a commanding cymbal count-in that the song erupts like a dog at the races with a bellowing atmosphere of bending guitar strings and a powerful rhythm section. From then on, the album never lets up. It is track after track of aggressive rock music. No momentum is lost. That is until you get to the first acoustic based track six songs in.

A song to punch a wall, scream in someone’s face, and generally get pumped to, “Get Your Guns” does the perfect job of establishing the tone which the rest of the album follows which any worthy album opener should do. Just because I like the song that much I’ve never pondered in depth about what it’s meaning is; if it’s good, I don’t see a reason too. Though there was a point that I did think “Everything Is” was a concept album about a war and various relationships between people while this war is happening. It probably isn’t. Though actually witnessing the lyrics might make you see why I got that idea.

So, yeah. Have a listen to it. Has a line from a Radiohead song in there too. That’s besides the point. If this doesn’t float your boat… you have no soul. But that’s just my opinion.