Artist: Theoadore Muddfoot Band Members: Georgia Faith (Lead & backing vocals, acoustic), Ian Rose (Lead, rhythm, and 12 string acoustic guitars, mandolin, harmonica, backing vocals), Amanda S. Williamson (Lead bass, backing vocals), Red (Lead drums, percussion, classical guitar, backing vocals) Location: Florida |
There are currently 1 Reviews of this Demo.
Average Rating: 2 |
Hel's Review:
Theoadore Muddfoot’s (referred to as TM from here on) press kit would be the perfect primer for a class called "Demo Don’ts 101". When I opened the package, a hail of tiny, poorly photocopied pieces of paper rained out. Now, I really want to support my fellow women in metal, otherwise I may have passed on doing a review for this one. Instead, I’m going to go through this in some detail in the hope that I can help this band and others from making these mistakes. Therefore, you should prepare yourselves for a long one.First, your press kit is only slightly less important than the cd itself. When all is said and done, your press kit should say less, "look how cool we are", but more, "look how cool we’ve shown everyone we are, and this is how people are responding". You should take the time to get a good master copy of each article, then lay them out in an appealing and efficient way while making sure each source is properly cited. Citations in press releases are just like in anything else, they lend credibility to what you say. Instead of 5 little pieces of paper, I should have gotten one full-size sheet that gave me all of that and more.
In addition to the teeny pieces of paper I keep complaining about, there were 4 full-sized sheets of paper. The first was a bio which was rendered unreadable due to the fact that it’s typed in all caps. Ultimately, it told me nothing about the background of the band (i.e., when they formed, line up changes, other recordings). Additionally, because I forced myself to read part of it, I came away with lots of questions. Like, "number one local band in Florida", says WHO?! Anyone can make up crap about themselves and claim it’s true. Bands that can and will tell you who, naturally have more credibility.
The second sheet of paper is an internet printout from a message board. Who’s to say those aren’t five of your friends? Internet message boards are great fun, but not necessarily credible sources. Next sheet, a very short, all caps, interview - also unreadable. A source is cited, but one I’d never heard of with no additional info besides the fanzine name. For obvious reasons, interviews aren’t ordinarily included with press kits.
Finally, there’s a photocopy from a newspaper, which is a local event listing. This shouldn’t have been included at all - there’s no information about the band given, just that they’d be playing at a local dive on some indiscernible date. The reason it is there is to say, "hey, we got our picture in the paper" - problem is, it’s the same picture that’s on the cd. The only circumstances under which this should even be included is if it’s a different photo, then crop it nicely and add it to your collection of confetti as we discussed above.
So the existing press kit needs work. Spruce it up as suggested, reformat and rewrite the bio, and you’ll have a nice basic kit. Back to the cd packaging, which I skipped over because it doesn’t need much work. The packaging of the cd isn’t professional quality, but it’s obvious a lot of work was put into it, and it’s impressive for those reasons alone. To make it look more professional, get Kinkos to do color copies on heavy paper for you instead of relying on inkjet.
So now it’s time to turn to the music. This is a band after all, and just because you have a name, logo, and mascot, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a band. It’s all about the music. There is definitely music on this cd, but most of it doesn’t qualify as metal by my standards. But I’ve got pretty set standards for what I consider to be good metal and it always needs to be very heavy. So I’m not good with border types. Therefore, please keep in mind all standards, analogies, and whatnot are from my very own, "What it Takes to be Metal" guide.
First of all, aggression is a fundamental metal ingredient, and there’s zero here. Distorted guitars and solos do not equal metal. The recurring analogies I think of for TM are Heart and Stevie Nicks. I would say all of the Stevie Nicks might come from the vocal sound, but that only accounts for about 25 percent of my Heart analogy. But let’s come back to the overall sound and talk about the individual components first.
The production is awful. No question - this was taped in somebody’s basement. The biggest problem is that the vocals are WAY too high in the mix. While having a female singer is a major focal point of the band, if she’s not the most talented person in the band (and I’ve got to put this bluntly - she’s not) then turn her down. Overall, the singer’s voice is passable and even very good at times. If she can work out her occasional flat pitch issues, she’ll work out fine.
The guitar and bass sound like the strong points, at least what I can hear of them. The most notable thing is that the solos are much louder than any other parts, beyond the vocals, and this is not what you will find in a professional recording. The drummer seems to have good timekeeping skills, which is key, but overall doesn’t hit the skins with enough authority. The rhythm section works well together as a whole, and that’s extremely important. In general, TM should work on their coherence as a unit and particularly getting changes, starts, and stops done all at the same time.
Overall, the best song should be put first on any recording you do until you’re firmly established with a label. Until then, you can’t be guaranteed that someone will sit through the entire album like I have. Unfortunately, a lot of this record’s best stuff is toward the end. And enough with the swamp sounds! Bookending a song with it is a great idea, but save it for the end of the album and don’t do it more than once. Otherwise you’ll get comments like the one I just made.
In general, I’m not certain that TM is doing themselves a service by billing themselves as a metal band. But I think there’s a lot of potential here. The band needs to spend a lot of time practicing and it would be useful to listen to some REALLY heavy shit before and after. Before to get pumped up, and after to think about things to incorporate into your sound next practice. It’s also a good way to get on the same page as the rest of your band mates.
This band has fundamental talent. And if there is talent it should be encouraged. My philosophy is that if you took enough time to get this far, you should know what you did wrong so you can go farther. But reality is that this band is just not in the same league as most, if not all, of the other bands we’ve reviewed and my rating is a reflection of that. What I would ultimately like to see happen is to have TM take this to heart and come back in a year or two and show me how they’ve done.
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