The Lunar Effect – Fortune’s Always Hiding
Release Date: 24th October 2025
Label: Svart Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Hard Rock, Blues Rock, Grunge.
FFO: 90s nostalgia
Review By: Paul Franklin
If you were to transpose the musical world with the culinary world, then this album is a bit like those multinational all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants. There is a little bit of everything on offer.
90s style hard rock, tick (Feed The Hand).
Piano lead ballad, tick (I Disappear).
Moody Goth Number, tick (A New Moon Rises).
Alice in chains style grunge, tick (Settle Down).
Boozy blues rock, tick (My Blue Veins)
Unfortunately, however, what’s served up is disappointingly bland and insipid. In most cases, the tracks go by with very little dynamism or engagement, they merely exist as passages of time filled with some sounds.
The press release for this album states that the band don’t fit neatly into a box, which isn’t a problem if you are offering up something flashy and intriguing, but if all you are doing is deliberately making something familiar and mundane an awkward shape then frustration rather than fascination is the inevitable result.
Vocalist Josh Neuwford’s voice quickly becomes irritating when you realise that he’s going to adopt the same earnest and slightly overwrought tone for every track, not to mention the ‘ickiness’ he creates in My Blue Veins with its lyric “bruises fade and change in time, when you soak into my blue veins”.
If you have enjoyed dining out at a variety of restaurants, it’s hard to see the appeal of the aforementioned buffets, likewise if you have enjoyed listening to a variety of rock music, it’s hard to see the appeal of this album.
(1 / 5)
