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For as much good as the legacy of Nirvana left us, it's also had its fair share of down sides - mostly in the shape of hundreds of indentikit pop-rock bands kicking out the same quiet-loud dynamics, crunching power chords and big singalong choruses, but without the raw power or energy to back things up.
Newcomers, Nine Black Alps, are the latest in a long line to riff on that same formula, so here we have an album of those self same quiet-loud dynamics, crunching power chords and big singalong choruses in spades.
Fortunately this is a band looking much more towards early Nirvana though, as a noisy guitar squall runs through most of the songs here and they edge more towards a Dinosaur Jr style of loud indie-rock.
GET YOUR GUNS, while storming out the gates with a frenetic ball of noisy guitars and snarling vocals also immediately throws up one of the main problems that plagues EVERYTHING IS - there's a modern alt-rock sheen that runs through the entire album, a shine that reeks of expensive recording studios and an MTV oriented slickness. Much in the same way the last Vines album felt watered down and calculated or the shiny production values that you get in US college rock acts like Puddle Of Mudd or Good Charlotte, this is a debut record that suffers from an air of record company expectation and marketing dreams. COSMOPOLITAN, another slick alt-rock song pushes all the right buttons and explodes in all the right places, but there's just something in the way Sam Forrest's vocals erupt into gruff Americanised hollering or the way the guitars are left to imitate messy dissonance rather than actually achieving it.
It's on the slower moments here that Nine Black Alps emerge as a band with something more to say, something a song like UNSATISFIED proves as shimmering guitar lines morph into the heavier moments and the vocals are left sounding less forced and more at ease with themselves. HEADLIGHTS is another example of getting things right, a snappy pop song with a wink to bands like Ash and Cable - pop melodies ride over distorted guitar chords and you're left with the feeling that under all the predictable posturing, there's an inventive pop band struggling to get themselves heard.
A gentle acoustic folk ditty, BEHIND YOUR EYES, swaps the angst for pretty melodies and a lilting mood and is a healthy indication of more interesting directions for the future. But for now you're stuck with a band more interested in stomping on those distortion peddles and screaming a bunch of angst-ridden indie-rock singalongs - EVERYBODY IS, is the Vines' Ride on steroids while songs like JUST FRIENDS and SHOT DOWN belt along at a fair pace, but totally fail to make an impression above the staleness.
EVERYTHING IS does have its moments of interest, songs like BEHIND YOUR EYES or HEADLIGHTS are moments when your ears prick up and take notice and you can hear a band with the potential to go on to big things. Unfortunately, there's far too much of the bland indentikit neo-grunge going on the rest of the time for things to ever truly engage, leaving an album that fades into one at times and passes by with little more than mild indifference.
Basically sounding like The Vines with bigger rock muscles or Rival Schools on a pop tip, Nine Black Alps are a band doing the whole watered down indie-rock schtick pretty well, but in desperate need of some real inventiveness or passion for what they're doing.

So our friends Ilana and Gaz asked me and David to play guitar in their punk band at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs show. We said yes but didn't meet each other for a month or so. We had a few practices like this but didn't have any songs so just ended up getting drunk and arguing. Gaz became reclusive, and then Ilana moved to London so me and David were left with some songs I'd written and sort of demoed on my 8 track.
Since we didn't really have anything better to do with our lives we decided to try and play these songs like a band would so we ran into James in a bar and asked him if he could play drums and he said yes and we asked him if he used the ride cymbal alot and he said yeah so we started practicing with him. actually Ilana was still in the band at this point and everything started sounding really cool and loud (compared to not having a drummer) then Ilana did move down to London so we had to find a bass player. We didnt find a bass player and instead found Martin who actually plays acoustic guitar and so he graciously agreed to play bass. then we spent that autumn making up songs and making sure that we were loud.
By the time xmas came around we found ourselves with about 9 or 10 songs so thru a chance meeting with aKoUstTIK AnArkhY we played our first show in the basement of the Piccadilly Gardens hotel on the 20th of Decemeber 2003. And then some other stuff happened.

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