Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

This band would have been revolutionary 15 years ago. Unfortunately, they are a carbon copy of a band from Cleveland known as the Nine Inch Nails. Also unfortunate for them is that they aren’t as cohesive as Trent Reznor and the boys. The band does an OK job with Demolition City, but the CD is exactly like a lot of things I’ve heard before, and that leads me to want to make the disc spin faster just to get it over with.

You can also hear influences from the 80s, ranging from The Police to Depeche Mode to The Cure (although they stray from any comparison at times making me wonder what they are thinking. Didn’t they take Music 101?). This is your basic, riff driven, bass infused industrial rock music. I don’t see anything special here, and not many of the tracks really stand out all that much.

From what I’ve heard, however, the band has a pretty solid fan base, and they will hit the road this summer in support of this latest release on Chamberlain Records. I don’t know much about their “fervent live performances,” but I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that that statement is not a hyperbole at all.

The Anix consists of a unique lineup of brothers Brandon (vocals, guitar/bass) and Logan Smith (drums) and Greg Nabours (keyboard) and hails from the great city of Los Angeles, California. I thought it was interesting to hear that they are from L.A. after finding that out, mainly because I always assumed that a band like NIN absolutely had to be from somewhere on the West Coast, because anything different or “fringe” has to be from one of the coasts (ever heard of grunge?).

What I’m trying to say here in my meaningless ramblings is that this is not a band that will stick out to many hardcore music fans. They might find a solid niche fan base, but I really don’t expect much more than that from them if they can’t develop something new and/or unique. Think NIN meets My Chemical Romance or 30 Seconds to Mars. The music sounds like the Cleveland rockers and the message is the same as many “rock bands” of today (and don’t say, “What message?,” because we all know that rock bands today don’t have a message).

The only song on this entire album that I was even remotely interested in was the opening track, Bullets Without a Gun. The bass driven sound is almost unique, but the vocals are cookie-cutter and can be heard from your garden variety local band any day of the week.