Unseen and Unheard

THE TITLE says it all really. Snowblind Waltz are four guys from Galway who, in the three years or so that they've been together, have played only a handful of gigs, recorded two outstanding demos and otherwise rarely gone outside of their (undoubtedly gloomy) bedsits.

Snowblind Waltz have no history to speak of. Nobody seems to know very much about them. They are the musical equivalent of Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name character and they have no rock star friends in a town where the musicians stick so close they even accompany each other to nightclub toilets. Maybe they're lazy. Perhaps they're just shy. Let's call them obscure.

The ten tracks on this album reveal a little more about the band's pastimes. They obviously listen to a lot of Nick Cave and early Birthday Party albums (with the lights off). They obviously watch a lot of movies whilst stoned on low grade cannabis. And they're big fans of Charles Bukowski's poetry. Have you pigeonholed them yet? No? Good, because there's more to this band than the sum of their influences.

Snowblind Waltz weave moody guitar riffs, dark melancholic lyrics and headfuck samples together into the kind of music that will have your parents scouring your bedroom for syringes should they catch you listening to it. Most of the lands they take you through have been previously charted but occasionally they stray into the strangest of backwaters - 'Russia' and 'A Way Of Being' being prime examples.

To keep this review well balanced, I have a few moans but it took me ages to come up with them. 'My Maniac' perhaps waves the Nick Cave influence flag a little too obviously for comfort and, erm, . . . Okay, one moan. Unseen and unheard no longer, this could be the start of something big for Snowblind Waltz.

In a smallish kind of way.

* Olaf Tyaransen