FIVE.BOLT.MAIN
Venting
Rock Ridge Music 2005
www.fiveboltmain.com

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What’s the 4-1-1?
Heavy riffs and metal screams punctuate the debut album from Five.Bolt.Main.

Genre
Hard rock / heavy metal

The Good
For a band that is most definitively a metal group, they do have a pretty decent sense of melody. The first cut on the disc, “The Gift,” has a great hook in the chorus that really grabs the listener’s ear. I really enjoyed a lot of the guitar work here. “Wait In Line” and “Seems To Be Fine” are examples where the music stood head and shoulders above the vocals. The material on Venting is almost entirely straightforward metal.

Singer Chris Volz can wail out a metal scream like nobody’s business, and drummer Ivan Arnold lays down an impressive foundation to each song. The songs that stand out most on this album are “Made Like This”, “Life Of Mine”, and the first single “Pathetic.” This last song was my particular favorite, the drumming is superb and I loved the spitfire manner in which the vocals were delivered like a machine gun. This song earns a place on my top songs of the year list.

The Bad
There are a couple songs that I found to be strictly filler material. They just didn’t strike a chord with me in the slightest. The song “Bid Farewell” closes the CD, and while it actually starts off well, it begins to fade in the middle of the song and just kind of meanders it’s way to the conclusion. Though singer Volz has the ability to switch between a more melodic sound in his voice to a low guttural tone at any time, there are two songs where I found his vocals to be the thing holding back the songs from being great.

The Verdict
This is a solid debut for this new metal band. It’s got a lot of what metal audiences SHOULD be looking for, even with the album’s few problems. I found Venting to be well worth the time taken to give it a listen, and I think others will too.

Did You Know?
Shortly after the release of this album, 3/5 of the band’s lineup quit over musical differences. The two guitarists (Kobie Jackson, Ron Paige) and the bassist (Alex Cando) from the hard rock group Alston were hired to replace them.

Rating: out of 5

-- Jay Roberts