The Entrance Band - The Entrance Band

        In a recent press release, the Entrance Band – a rehashed version of Guy Blakeslee’s stoney psych rock band Entrance – invite the listener on an “incendiary ten song journey,” achieving “the full realization of the power trio” along the way. Problem is, the journey just isn’t incendiary and it won’t take you anywhere you haven’t been before. The Entrance Band are technically solid musicians, blending straightforward alt-rock melodies and herky-jerky post-punk rhythms with flowing, busy guitar lines and frontman Guy Blakeslee’s bending tenor. These components, though, never really gel into the high-energy psychedelic blues-rock trance the band seems to aim for in its mission to become the Alpha and Omega of power trios.  

        The band makes its best showings when they keep it short and/or simple, like the twisty counterpoint of “Lookout!” and the insistent, clambering drum and bass of “Grim Reaper Blues pt. 2.” Too often, the guitar lines are tweeting, ornamented filler that weigh the tracks down rather than take the melodic lead or even just add some desperately-needed drive or grittiness. (Blakeslee cheerily noodles around throughout, but maybe doesn’t remember that he’s still singing and the rest of the band is still going too.)  Remember in “Amadeus” when Emperor Joseph II listened to Mozart play and told him that there were “too many notes?”  Ironically vapid for Jeffrey Jones’ monarch, but spot on for the extraneous guitar work of “You Must Turn,” “Hourglass,” and a good portion of “Still Be There.” “Grim Reaper Blues pt.2” - a new, but inferior version of the opening cut from Entrance's 2006 album Prayer of Death - suffers less from this baroque affliction.  Instead of Blakeslee’s vocals, Paz Lenchantin’s warm bass takes the lead and it pays off in some beefy Mountain-ous thump.  Still, the only places where the embellished guitar twiddle doesn’t detract from the music are on the hit or miss instrumental passages (where soloing makes a little more sense), like the enjoyable mid-tempo jams between verses on “Hourglass” or the latter half of "Sing for the One."  On the airy “Lives,” the band even takes a stab at twinkly Brit-ish rock, with Blakeslee doing his best impression of Keane’s Tom Chaplain.  Unfortunately, this one’s a dud too.  Overall, the overplayed guitar lines match the album’s overstuffed and largely undifferentiated songs; many of the tracks are too long by half and the jammy lack of structure makes for a “power” trio album that rarely sounds powerful, urgent, or even cohesive. 

        To make matters worse, Blakeslee’s simple lyrics are bland at best and, at worst, they're stale schmaltz masquerading as rose-colored wisdom.  On "You Must Turn", he's tryin' to help, but nothin' happens.  ("Do you see the prison walls you build around yourself/Hope you'll(?) see that you are trapped/Do you blame someone else?"..."You say there's just one way, but I know you are wrong/You will see a new direction everywhere you turn/Will you seize the magic hours and hold them in your hands?").  “M.L.K.”, a good-hearted, but ham-headed tribute to you know who, pairs the sweet cheese of undulating jam band guitars with an inane mash-up of hollow positivity and civil rights-lite sloganeering (e.g. “Try a little bit harder/open your eyes up/you got to wise up/and then you’re gonna rise up/keep on pushin’ a little bit harder…”).  While hacked or humdrum lyrics don’t necessarily break an energetic rock album, Blakeslee’s voice alone wrecks some otherwise listenable tracks.  Blakeslee is keen on soaring elastics akin to a higher-pitched, less tuneful Chris Cornell with a hint of Devendra Banhart’s wavering timbre. Too bad he has neither Cornell’s powerful pipes to sustain his voice above frenzied guitars (or empty space - i.e. “Grim Reaper Blues pt. 2”), nor Banhart’s judicious sense of timing and phrasing.  As a result, Blakeslee draws out lyrics into shrill, thin cries, his vocals sprawling without pause over the verses on “Hourglass,” “You Must Turn,” and the decidedly unsexy “You’re So Fine.” 

       If Blakeslee drew back both his vocals and guitar, and the band instead built their sound around the call-and-response staccato opening of “Still Be There,” the stripped-down punch and reverb between 1:10 and 1:30 of “You’re So Fine,” or the solid opener “Lookout!”, the Entrance Band would be a quite bit closer to realizing the aggressive, but melodic swagger and slap-happy rowdiness that make power trios like Blue Cheer, Mountain, and Rose Hill Drive so much damn dirty fun.

LISTEN HERE ("Lookout!")

LISTEN TO SAMPLES ON ALLMUSIC