The Gifted - Inside Out

Artist: The Gifted

Album: Inside Out

Label: Hit it With a Hammer

Genre: Alternative rock

Release Date: July 1^st 2013

The Gifted, a Sheffield based, Alternative Rock band, have released their fourth album Inside Out. They describe themselves as:

“Born from disaffection and resentment.
We are passionate in a passionless society.
We are focused in an apathetic world.
Music has become a commodity, a shell of what it was. Plastic faces, glamorising parties for fakes and liars.
We are real and we are true. We are the glamorisation of nothing.”

To me, Andy, Izzy and Gennie, the 3 gentlemen that form The Gifted, bring music that sounds very British. Not raise-your-pinkie-finger-while-you-drink-your-teacup British, but hardworking-lads-that-love-the-pub British.

Combining elements from alternative rock with industrial, The Gifted remind me of Placebo with more angst-filled, aggressive vocals. Here and there, on tracks such as “Artificial Happiness” and “Home”, melodic piano interludes surface, which remind me of The Renaissance.

The melodic parts are a drawback on Inside Out every now and then. At times, The Gifted sound too much as if they were just cobbling together a few ideas from shattered parts that don't really work together.

One of the highlights on Inside Out is the title track “Inside Out” with its menacing atmosphere, that almost makes you experience a depression or other mental illness. The broken, more vulnerable vocals on “Home” add a nice touch to the album as well.

To conclude: The Gifted are nice to listen to, but they're nothing really exceptional – angsty rock with a high garage level and an honest feel to it, but nothing that creeps underneath my skin.