Review: Mahogany Head Grenade - Return To The Point Of Departure (2013)

Artist: Mahogany Head Grenade
Album: Return To The Point Of Departure
Year: 2013
Label: Self released

Review: Diego Camargo

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Thoughts: Every once in a while we have some ‘unusual’ band that focuses on different kind of music and most of the time with instrumental songs. The American trio Mahogany Head Grenade is one of those bands!

Mahogany Head Grenade is an instrumental trio from United States. Their debut EP is called Return To The Point Of Departure (2013) and it was self-released on May 28th. It was recorded and engineered by Sterling Winfield at Casey Diorios Valve Studios in Dallas (Texas) and produced by Sterling Winfield and the band itself.
The band is compressed of Dan Hyer (guitar), James Falcon (bass) and Mike Pritchett (drums).

Mahogany Head Grenade was formed in June 2011 and presents a kind of virtuosic musicianship but combined with accessible writing. They also use historical audio samples in their music and they’re all triggered in real time.

As I said, Return To The Point Of Departure (2013) is their first album, an EP to be precise, with 5 tracks and around 30 minutes.
Track one, the title-track, is pure Joe Satriani, but as the album goes forward we can see that the musician is a big influence for them. Many interesting dialogues open the song and they keep coming every now and then.
Their sound is heavy (mostly because of Dan Hyer’s guitars) with many solos and different chord progressions.

The follow up song ‘Trouble For Trouble’ has, once again, the voices and dialogues (their way of using vocals throughout the album) and it’s a track more moderate when it comes to its tempo.
James Falcon bass appears a bit more here and Dan keeps soloing away while Mike Pritchett holds the band together on the drums with competence.

Track three of the EP is ‘Vinedresser’, once again with the voices, but now also with weird ‘noises’ through the intro.
The next song, ‘Etude War Machine’ begins a bit more modern for a second, but soon is transformed into a solid and heavy upbeat song.
‘Venetian Bricks’ is the final song on Return To The Point Of Departure (2013) and pretty much sums up all that I said previously.

Mahogany Head Grenade was able to show with Return To The Point Of Departure (2013) high quality musicianship and songwriting.
There’s plenty of influence on the album from names like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. It’s high guitar oriented music. They also reminded me a bit of the Brazilian instrumental Rock trio Macaco Bong because they have a similar style.

Although for my personal taste I miss good vocals and more Progressive Rock in the compositions, this band is perfect for guitar aficionados and instrumental Rock music lovers.

The band was included in our Podcast #23 and you can listen the track 'Return To The Point Of Departure' HERE.