Sergij the Freak meets the Burning Engines (Daredevil DD017)
From Aural Innovations #20 (July 2002)
This is a split CD with two recent Swedish acts on the German label, Daredevil! Sergej starts the CD off with some spaced out sounds and then you are immediately taken away to the world of KYUSS. Just a little too much for my liking. We already had one real Kyuss and one Swedish Kyuss (Lowrider). Luckily, after the first two songs, the band try to make a sound more of their own, but it just does not grab me much. Good solid rocking band but nothing to make you stand up and listen.
The Burning Engines are a hard, fast and heavy metal band with a gruff lead vocalist and not that "Stoner" like. "Garden of Evil" is a pretty cool song, reminding me a lot of some of the good 80's metal stuff with a cool wah wah lead guitar. Great driving stuff. "Dreaming With The Eagle" keeps up the pace and rocks out as well. "Love Song" is not a ballad as you might think and features a harmonica solo and closes the CD.
There are a lot of cool record labels out there releasing "Stoner Rock and Roll" or whatever you want to call it. Most of the bands are quite solid, play well, write decent songs but so many lack a really good vocalist that stands out and catches you, like Thomas of WE, John from Kyuss, Torben from Magnified Eye, Dave from Monster Magnet, etc... I think this is one area where these two bands could be stronger.
For more information you can visit the Sergej The Freak web site at: http://www.sergejthefreak.com/.
Email them at: sergej_the_freak@hotmail.com.
Email The Burning Engines at: burningengines@yahoo.se.
Sergij the Freak meets the Burning Engines is distributed by Daredevil. You can visit their web site at: http://www.daredevil.de.
Reviewed by Scott Heller