Riddle Of Steel - Got This Feelin' (2005)

Riddle Of Steel is a hell of a lot of fun to listen to. While many of today’s indie-rock bands are trying to sound like everybody else they hear on (corporate) radio, Riddle Of Steel instead has forged its own distinctive identity. They’ve done this by creating a sound that includes everything THEY heard on the radio while growing up, and their record collections, too – scraps of ‘80s-styled power-pop, vintage ‘70s metal and prog-rock and ‘90s-era punk infect Riddle Of Steel’s music like a high-grade fever.

As shown by Riddle Of Steel’s third album, Got This Feelin’, the band knows what to do with these disparate influences, and they don’t wear them on their sleeves like some folk. This St. Louis-based trio has seemingly created its own indie-rock nirvana, leading to a maddening game of “chase the sounds” as in “this song sounds like.” It’s a game you’ll never win, ‘cause Riddle Of Steel is too damn good at hiding the ghosts of its musical predecessors beneath sheets of chiming guitars and floating melodies.

“The Lovers Of Never” sounds like early Police, before Sting got all uppity and self-righteous, the song’s soundtrack incorporating elements of jazz and rock with syncopated rhythms and vocal harmonies. “Deeper Still” begins with a persistent guitar line suitable for Echo & the Bunnymen, or maybe Joy Division, or maybe one of a half-dozen other early-80s new wave bands. ROS tricks the song out with a space-rock coda featuring otherworldly guitarwork and cacophonic drumming.

The album’s title track starts off like something out of the Alex Lifeson songbook before evolving into a college rock ode that is all angles and straight lines, a low-fi sonic masterpiece worthy of Sebadoh or Pavement. “Detroit Flu” kicks out the jams, led by Rob Smith’s muscular drumming, Andrew Elstner’s guitar and Jimmy Vavak’s bass intertwining in an instrumental battle that starts/stops, starts/stops with insane precision, the band swinging into monster arena-rock riffing before lapsing back into a stoned groove.

Got This Feelin’ is a solid collection of inspired performances, Riddle Of Steel displaying incredible energy, impressive instrumental skills and more than a little late-night creativity in their welding together of various styles and eras of music. In an age where most bands are chasing a major label contract, dumbing down their sound to the LCD of radio playlists and TV soundtracks, it’s refreshing to hear a band like Riddle Of Steel that has ideas to spare and the skill and desire to bring them to life. (Ascetic Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Got This Feelin' from Amazon.com)