My Vitriol
Finelines

A rainy afternoon in 1999 I was at home watching TV, and Red Ronnie was introducing an emerging rock band on tmc2, with a frontman sporting long black hair, dark complexion, generous eyeliner, and markedly Indian features. My Vitriol...
"What a lousy name," I turned off the TV without thinking twice and went back to drown in boredom in other rooms.
Big mistake.

Finelines is a beautiful album, considering it’s the debut album of a band that literally came out of nowhere, everything is even more magical and interesting.
16 tracks.
Need to press Skip on the player: zero.

The singer's voice is clear and wonderfully melodic, yet desperately angry and lost within reverberations of dreamlike and deep sounds. The sound is typically American, in the realm of grunge, with the addition of labyrinthine tones and significant psychedelic loops, delay effects combined with the power of some sharp riffs (I suppose they have a wide array of pedals at their disposal live).
In other words, there's nothing in common with the new raw and dry sounds of various Strokes and White Stripes; rather, one could say that My Vitriol is the right combination of nirvana (to whom they owe much), Verve, and a touch of seventies-progressive (The Nice?? Well, I don't know…).
Indie rock enthusiasts cannot miss this appointment with this work. Entirely arpeggiated and clean songs ("Taprobane"), others dirty, only riffs and octaves in fast sequences, broken by rasping screams alternating with a singing always perfectly in tune and a basic melody always very catchy ("Losing Touch," "Pieces," "Always Your Way").

The single that should have launched them in Europe is "Grounded," to whose video (as beautiful as it is absurd and twisted) participated someone who made being alternative a must in life, Vincent Gallo.

If you don't want to buy this gem because you are still skeptical, download one of the tracks I mentioned or ask someone who already has this album at home, and if they tell you it's not worth it... don't believe them!