Review: Tom Slatter - Through These Veins (2014)

Information:
Artist: Tom Slatter
Album: Through These Veins EP
Release date: January 21, 2014
Label: Self released

Tracklist:

1. I Am Not Your Heart - 6'38

2. Segue - I Am Not Your Heart - 1'37

3. Without My Medicine - 3'36

4. Through These Veins - 6'13

Running time: 18:04

Production details: All music, production, mixing by Tom Slatter

Packaging details:
Format: CD/Jewelcase
Info: 4 pages booklet, home made printing. Artwork by Joe Slatter

_________________________________________________________________________________
Review by Diego Camargo       Rating: 

Thoughts: Tom Slatter is a British musician that has been producing lots of material since his first album, Spinning The Compass (2009) which was released five years ago. Basically almost every year Tom had something new released.

Last year I got to know his music with the great album Three Rows Of Teeth (2013) (review HERE). This year he’s releasing a series of EPs and the first one is called Through These Veins (2014) which I’ll be reviewing in the next lines.

Through These Veins (2014) has four tracks and the EP is connected to his next EP and a full album, all releases for this year, telling a story about a rogue surgeon who starts to make his experiments with living beings and starts to transform them into living sculptures… macabre? Yes, Tom’s music is not your everyday topic thing, his Steampunk background makes him very unique in the Prog world.

So the story starts with ‘I Am Not Your Heart’ that is a treat for the ear, the track is a little pearl full of weird and interesting guitars. In the next one, ‘Segue – I Am An Artist’ we have a small dark tale, almost as a little movie.
Although the ideas of the songs are fantastic and the instrumental is rich Tom’s vocals in the EP are not really up with the music, for me they don’t match with the high quality of the compositions. And this is weird cause his vocals on Three Rows Of Teeth (2013) were very good!

The third track on Through These Veins (2014) ‘Without My Medicine’, though interesting, is an alien in this EP with its electronic Pop sound. It’s a weak track and there’s not much to say about it, really.
The title-track closes Through These Veins (2014) very well. Initially, it starts with a little piano and it follows with a weird sounding guitar in a waltz rhythm. A really good and different track!

Through These Veins (2014) besides being short (it’s an EP after all) is a great presentation of Tom Slatter’s music. Despite the weak vocals in some moments the four tracks presented here are very interesting and very well recorded and produced.

His second EP of the mad scientist series, Black Water (2014), is already out and will be interesting to follow his strange tale step by step. I’ll be waiting to know the ending!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Listen to Tom Slatter on our Podcast #33 HERE.

Video:

Buy it:

CD

MP3