The Demo Review:

	There are currently 1 Reviews of this Demo. Average Rating: 2
Band Name: Scorch Demo Title: Faces Band Members: Russ Meuchel: Guitar, Vocals; Emilio Diaz: Rhythm Guitar; Dave Arvo: Bass, Percussion; Shawn Farrell: Percussion; John Noteware: Percussion Location:Michigan Email for This Artist Official Web Site for This Artist Discuss on the Metal Judgment Web Board

Redwolff's Review:
Tonight's review is of Down to Earth, an updated version of Heaven Can Wait, with comedian Chris Rock in the Warren Beatty role... oh, right.
Scorch provided us with a very thorough and professional-looking promo package for this demo, which has a great-looking case featuring quality cover art, band photos, lyrics, and all the information about the band you could ever want to know. The website is also pretty slick. Reading the little bio of the band provided with the promotional materials (which also included a sticker, merchandise options, and a list of the "lyric insights") got me psyched to hear the band as they boasted of having three percussionists. I'm a fan of other bands with more than one percussionist, such as Slipknot and Puya - the difference between those bands and Scorch, however, is that they ARE professional musicians. Scorch still needs time to pull themselves together before they can pull it off.
It was very difficult to get past the drumming as the three musicians don't always listen to each other, and one of them is possibly a woodpecker on a pickle bucket. The lyrics? I don't really care what their inspiration was, the results turned out pretty goofy. For example, "Face" contains the lines Sweet yet sick/ to turn the treacherous trick/ of raunch and of wrick. A wrick is a neck strain. I guess they could be suggesting the treacherous trick is poor technique on a blowjob, causing a muscle pull. But let's look at another example, from "Scorch": Scorch/ You're scorched/ Scorch/ You're scorched/ Scorch/ You're scorched/ Scorch/ You're scorched. That took some serious inspiration. Well, they're not all that bad, to be fair. Probably the best thing about this demo is the vocals, although that might be because they are the one thing that is consistently discernable in the mix. Despite their claim that "we feel the production is definitely up to par with many national bands' first releases" it really is not; on top of the poor drum sound (I can't even tell if one of the percussionists is using a full kit or not) the vocals are higher than anything else, and I caught what sounds like a bad edit when the guitar solo comes in on the fifth song, at about the 2:08 mark.
This is one of those times when I listen to a CD and think, Can't these guys hear how bad this is? Unfortunately, they are not alone as amateurs, we get some pretty bad professional releases here as well. I could do a better job reviewing Scorch if their sound engineering was as impressive as their marketing skills. From what I can hear on what they gave me, the singer and guitarist should pool their cash and buy some time at a real recording studio. But in saying that, I might be unjustly demonizing the drummers, bassist and rhythm guitarist - the truth is I can't tell if I am, and that's a bad thing. A demo should showcase the talents of the entire band, should they have any. The result is that I can't say where the problem lies, but this demo doesn't get more than 2 skulls out of me.

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