“I’m a shockwave and I’ll take your fucking life!” Not my words, but the words of teenage heavy metal tearaways, Black Tide. These naughty little scamps are apparently the ‘future’ of heavy metal; a future that sounds, well, pretty much like the past.
Let’s be honest, all heavy metal music sounds the same. Since the early 80s, heavy metal has basically been all power chords, shouting shit lyrics and screechingly fast guitar solos. However, metal purists will argue there are so many vibrant and enrichingly different fields under your basic metal ‘umbrella’ (death metal, thrash metal, gothic metal, nu metal, rap metal, speed metal – ad infinitum) but who cares? It’s ALL THE SAME SHIT!
Anyway, back to Black Tide and ‘Shockwave’. It’s not actually a bad track as far as metal goes (ah but which sub-genre, Christopher? Pray tell us) and the young lads in question demonstrate not bad ability, but the lyrics are REALLY bad: “I’m like a bullet at the speed of light! I go around taking people’s lives! While you sit around saying lies!” croons the singer, like an angry, bile-spitting Andrew Motion.