The Fall The Rise

The Fall The Rise is a Birmingham based four-piece band. After the dissolution of the bands that the four members had previously been in, they all decided that they still wanted to produce music that they loved and so The Fall The Rise was formed. In this ‘Interlopers’ album the band deals with issues such as love, sorrow, and despair. There is a great focus on ultimate redemption here though, the four young members of this band are clearly passionate about the music that they are creating and seemingly have a genuine love for the sound that they are producing.

The album title is an interesting one here I feel, apparently it stems from the feeling of the band within the Birmingham music scene. In this album The Fall The Rise jump between screams and soaring melodies, the music is quite formulaic and to be quite honest for the most part is not carried off too well at all. Whilst the sound that this band is producing is at times an interesting one, it’s all a little messily carried out and listening to ‘Interlopers’ therefore isn’t a particularly satisfying experience. Whilst the band are clearly passionate about the music they are making, their vocalist doesn’t have a particularly good voice and in fact struggles to hit a lot of the notes here. Front man Martin possesses quite a droning tone, little life is ever injected into the proceedings vocally and musically the band isn’t too excellent either. The drum beats sound quite out of time, the guitar riffs are often extremely simplistic, and when The Fall The Rise attempt to pull off a scream quite frankly it is often quite amusing.

The Fall The Rise sound like that local band that everyone goes to see but no one really likes. They’re friendly enough but the music just isn’t very good. I’d imagine that to see this band live in an intimate setting would be bearable, but to listen to a whole album of their music just isn’t my idea of fun. It’s hard to tell where one track finishes and the next begins, there’s a definite lack of creativity on display here and almost every track sounds entirely identical. A look down the track listing after listening and you’re not quite sure what the difference was between ‘Sleeping With Both Eyes Open’ and ‘By The Skin Of Our Teeth’ for example. The screams are in different places, but the music is still predictable and really rather tiresome.

My advice is that The Fall The Rise return to their Birmingham base and think long and hard about what they’ve done. ‘Interlopers’ is not a very good album at all, it’s extremely generic with a distinct lack of originality and variation shown here. If the bands members truly love the music they are producing as much as they claim to, then why were they not able to produce something a little more impressive than this? I’ve heard far worse I must admit, but The Fall The Rise to me just sound like an uninspired local band with a devoted following of few. Revolver Music is best known for signing The Stone Roses back in 1987 through their Black Records label, why then they’d want to sign a band as unexciting and clearly destined for nothing as The Rise The Fall I genuinely have no idea. More unimpressive albums I have heard than this, I still wouldn’t want to listen to ‘Interlopers’ too many times though; it’s just too lacklustre an offering to really impress on any level whatsoever.

The Rise The Fall have been together for years now but to listen to their music you really wouldn’t know it. The bands members really don’t gel well together, the music is more often than not messy and I feel that aside from the vocals it is the drumming of band member Steven that lets this band down most. The drum beats are terrible and if you can’t get a decent back beat going then all else will ultimately fail. Never does the band rise, but definitely they fall; ‘Interlopers’ is an incredibly poor album from this Birmingham band and if this is all they can come up with after four years together then I feel that there is little hope for the future of the band. This début album was four years in the making, perhaps The Rise The Fall should spend a further four years learning their instruments properly and a few singing lessons wouldn’t go amiss either.

Label: Black Records
Release Date: 14th January 2008

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