Well I don’t know if “Bend” will cause anyone to have a heart attack, but you might suffer whiplash from shaking your head around too hard. “Bend” is more of a progressive-metal orchestral piece played out with guitars, drums, a heavy bass, keys and string sounds. This song is right on target to be inserted into a soundtrack for an action film or action-adventure game. Or throw it on in your walkman at the gym and hit the punching bag...hard!

Its nicely arranged and played. It comes screaming out of the box. The structure moves together on changes and no real leads come to the surface, “Bend” scores high in its layers of texture and tone. It offers aggressive staccato breaks that really make you want to bash your fists into your own head and scream out obscenities (I know this is what is troubling today’s youth, but hey I had “Eye of the Tiger” as a kid and I turned out just fine…really)!

At first I was not sure if “Bend” suffers from a slightly muddy mix or it the layers of instrumentation need to be this tightly packed together for this piece to work. It’s a suffocating song not letting you up for air and this thick mass of sonic sludge helps portray that.

“Bend” is a killer f****** tune! Anyone into f****** heavy and f****** hard soundtrack-based instrumentals that offer more in the way of f****** structure and movement over shredding leads needs to f****** check Christian Pacaud out!

Man…I got to stop playing this before I hurt myself!

~ Joops ~

RATINGS:
Charisma:                     8.50         
Technical Skill:               8.50         
Structure:                     8.00         
Interest:                     7.00         
Performance:               8.00         
Arrangement:               8.50         
Recording Quality:         8.00         
Long Term Appeal:         7.50         
OVERALL:                     8.00