Freelance review of the most recent Rumble Fish album.
Even for Korean people the band Rumble Fish might not be as well-known as TRAX or EVE, but they also have only been around since the mid-summer of 2004 when they released their first album Swing Attack. This indies rock band contains four members: Choi Jini (vocals), Kim Sung Gun (guitar), Kim Ho Il (bass) and Park Chun Hwee (drums).
As for their genre, rock is not sufficient enough to describe them. Their pieces include a great mixture of piano melodies and guitar riffs, both supporting Choi Jini's strong voice. Their music is based on rock, but mixes with styles from pop to lyrical ballads.
Their latest album, Open the Safe, was released at the end of March this year. The 13-track-long release gives the fans nearly an hour to spend with melodic Kmusic!
The album starts with the song Fly followed by Bomi dweoeo kkocheun pigo, which both give the listener the false feeling that we will hear some old folks' monumental songs. But with the third track, Smile Again, they change speed and the album simply starts dynamicly flowing into our ears without even feeling the boarders of the songs. Most of the pieces give us an up-to-date end of spring feeling; visions of a warm day, slight wind, speding time in the nature.
The eigth track of the album, Nichijousahanji (Ilsangdabansa), is a good example of what Rumble Fish has to offer. Each song has its own genre (rock, pop,etc.) proving what I've mentioned before: even though they are categorized as a rock band, their music is simply more, much more and it keeps changing, it keeps maturing album by album and song by song.
And as with all good things, this album also has to end. By the end, the album becomes much slower again. The songstitles (track 12 - Good-Bye) also warn us that the hour is about the fade and the CD will end soon.
Personally, I've become a Rumble Fish fan thanks to this album. Though you might think they are nothing more than another one of the thousand Krock indies artists, after listening to Open the Safe their music shows how wrong that image is and proves that even smaller bands deserve a chance to get listened to; they might be better than we first thought.
