As someone who listens to around 30 new albums a month, I start to pick out the trends and can place albums on a shelf in the back of my mind in an instant. You don’t fit in even at 23? Let me put you on my “Pop Punk of 2012’ shelf. Your music is slated for a slasher film? Let’s get you settled in between Woe, Is Me and Greeley Estates. You sound like Jim Sheer is pimping you on the Vh1 Countdown, then you have to be radio ready pop or Adult Contemporary. You get the idea…But then comes along a record like Chance Blak’s Vermilion and I have no idea where it goes. It’s not something that usually lands in my inbox. It’s rock, but not the kind your mind promptly went to. It’s more of this 50’s inspired, yet 80’s like sound that has some grit to it.
“The Veil” reminded me of the kind of music Kenny from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead would perform some interesting air guitar too. But to think of it in a more modern way, it’s a song that’d play well if Chance Blak opened for Steel Panther in Hollywood. “Tumbler” is for those dudes and gals who love classic cars and think James Dean and Marilyn Monroe are the end all be all when it comes to ideal. That song came in last, but had something about it that made it the best. Maybe it was the theatrical (in a Rocky Horror Picture Show way) style of it, or it was that it was just an upbeat one that made me bounce a bit. Those two are where the whole 50’s and 80’s thing comes from, but all in all you can tell with “Only One Kiss” that this Jersey boy has to be inspired by fellow Garden State man, Jon Bon Jovi.
This music is for fans of pure rock n’ roll because you don’t like the new stuff, unless it’s from Bon Jovi. So if you find yourself hating what’s out there now because it doesn’t have that “classic” feel to it that your parents always talk about the music had “back in their day,” then Chance Blak is your new favorite guy and Vermilion is your new favorite album.
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