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Forest Field: Angels?
Forest Field Angels? CD Album Review

Forest Field: Angels?

Melodic Rock
3.0/5.0

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Rock Company Records
Words: Craig Hartranft
Added: 13.08.2015

I'm glad I didn't see the album art for Forest Field's Angels? first. I probably would have never listened to the album. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Forest Field is essentially the solo project of China White guitarist Peter Cox. Excepting the vocals, this is a total DIY project by him. He writes all the songs, plays all the instruments, and handles production from start to finish.

Peter Cox Band Photo

Peter Cox

If you can avert your eyes from the hideously shitty album art, you might find some interest in this work. Oops. Made you look. Cox must have some fascination with Japanese anime porn. Once more, I digress.

Largely, Angels? is all about Cox's song compositions and guitar playing. Add to this some ambient to atmospheric synths and drum programming. Of the eleven songs, five are instrumentals that elucidate the aforementioned formula. Yet in the songs with vocals, Cox gets adequate freedom of expression for his guitar and syths. And Cox is pretty fine guitar player with a smooth and fluid style in the classic rock guitar tradition. As for the vocals, they're provided exclusively by American Phil Vincent, probably best known for his Tragik project, who has a straight forward melodic presentation that fits Cox's compositions and style. Though sometimes he seems to slightly strain as within The Zoo, for example.

Wrapped up, the songs blur lines between progressive and melodic rock, likely more so to the latter. The title track and The Zoo definitely qualify as straight rock songs. Maybe Broken Wings and In Excelsis, both instrumentals, leaning towards prog. Overall, the songs were fine, but not all that interesting or engaging. Mostly, I liked Cox's guitar work, especially his leads. Not so much the wispy synths. I guess my conclusion is that after three spins, if I never play this album again (or see the album cover again), I won't be missing anything. By the way, there's another scantily clad chick on the inside of the booklet who looks less like Japanese anime. Just thought you should know.

Forest Field - Angels? EPK


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In Short

Largely, Angels? is all about Cox's song compositions and guitar playing. The songs were fine, but not all that engaging or interesting in the end.

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