Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Let's state from the git-go that this wasn't quit what I expected. The name Attila associated with a rock project conjures up images of take-no-prisoners guitar chords pounding at the gates of your ears, threatening to tear 'em down and leave 'em bleeding. That isn't what this is at all. No, LIFELINE more reminiscent of Country Joe & the Fish meeting Genesis. There is kind of a...tentativeness here, if you will, even on the tracks that kind of rock out.

The Attila and Dave Project are Attila Medvecsky (bass, keyboards, techno tricks, and lead vocals), Dave Stevenson (guitars, mandolin, and backing vocals), and Rusty Aceves (percussion). All of them are technically proficient, sometimes incredibly so; it's just that their material is weak, ill-suited for their vocals, and ultimately, uninteresting. They have their moments, on tracks such as "Moonlight;" it's just such moments are few and far between, and usually marred. It kind of comes off like updated Styx (though these guys are much better than Styx). It's not wretched, by any means, it's just that it's...boring. The music seems to be primarily keyboard-based (not surprising, since Medvecsky, who handles keyboard chores, wrote most of the material) which is fine, but LIFELINE spends too much time trying to decide whether it wants to be a rock record or something else. The result is that it unfortunately doesn't sound like much of anything.

Notwithstanding LIFELINE, Attila and Dave here may bear watching in the future. The lads are not lacking in technical proficiency here, and there are enough glimmers of unfulfilled good ideas, that down the road they may well come up with something. Whatever that might be, however, LIFELINE, regrettably, isn't it.