Kyoto Drive - The Approach

Birmingham, England's own Kyoto Drive have arrived on the music scene with their debut release, The Approach. The album is a dynamic and eclectic mix of rapturous hard melodies and thunderous, jaunting lyrics that grab a hold of you the minute you hear it and give you an idea right from the get go what their music is all about.

The disc gets underway with "Holiday" a simple structured, straightforward track that introduces you to the vocals of Adam Binder, who also handles bass duties as well and presents a more than capable frontman who can handle everything thrown his way with remarkable ease. "So Much Alive" is another melodic blast with a fury of guitars giving the band all it has to deliver a standout track that is a perfect example of the type of music that they regularly play. "Faking Laughs For Photographs" is a more toned down affair and settles into a mid-tempo groove, but still retains spurts of melodic breakdowns that were evident on the preceding tracks and shows off a little bit of diversity as well.

The second half of the effort starts off with my favorite track off the album, "Breathe", a song that strikes a perfect balance between hardcore rock and melodic pop-punk that hits on all cylinders here with wonderful vocal harmonies, and non-stop guitar riffs providing a spark of electricity that never gives out until the very end, a perfect and solid track all along. We get ready to close things out with "Chapters", a track that comes down a few notches in intensity from the prior one, but still packs a walloping punch with in your face melodies and wonderful vocals that give life to each and every song heard here on this album. The disc closes out masterfully on "You Never Knew", which starts out with a lush piano melody before settling into an appropriate downtempo groove that ties everything up together in one, neat little package and also allows us to take a look back at all the wonderful tracks we heard one after another. England's music scene hasn't gotten much coverage here on this blog, but after hearing Kyoto Drive's music here, a lot of this music isn't quite foreign to me because I love pop-punk and some hardcore music, and sometimes I think to myself why I don't cover music from this region more often. Alot of the music styles from England are quite similar to the music heard over here in the U.S., like indie rock, alt-rock, hardcore rock, and some hip-hop as well. Kyoto Drive is the latest in a long line of bands from the U.K. that will be looking to creep up on the shores of American listeners sometime soon down the road.

All in all, a wonderful listen from Kyoto Drive, who have proven that they are a force to be reckoned with, and are looking to be known not just within the confines of their home country of England, but beyond and eventually into the United States, where I think they will have a warm arrival and their music met with an enthusiastic response.

                                                                                                                            Album Score: 4.5/5

Track Listing:

1. Receive This Little Breath
2. Holiday
3. So Much Alive
4. Faking Laughs For Photographs
5. Breathe
6. Chapters
7. You Never Knew   

If you would like to check out "The Approach" for yourself, it's now available on iTunes and Spotify, among other fine digital music retailers.