Pure Inc. – Pure Inc.

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AFM Records
Produced by Tommy Vetterli

Pure Inc. are a new hard rock band from Switzerland of all places. Yeah, watches, knives and rock bands. Who’d have thought? But they’re damned good, so let’s entertain the theory for a minute. Releasing their debut album in September last year through AFM records, an independent hard rock label from Germany that also handles bands like Masterplan, Annihilator, Jorn, Doro and U.D.O., Pure Inc. have toured in support of some big names, including the Michael Schenker Group and Dokken.

Vocalist Gianni Pontillo sounds like a cross between Chris Cornell, Glenn Hughes and Jorn Lande; prestigious names to be compared to, for sure. For the harder rocking tracks he sounds like Cornell (and not your flat, recent Audioslave Cornell either) and Lande, and takes on a Hughes-esque quality for the softer stuff. The band’s musical style is pure, unfiltered, grooving hard rock. It’s modern, it’s lively and it’s catchy. It’s everything we need these days in a hard rock album. Not dated, up-beat (there are plenty of bands to bring you back down again if it all gets a bit too heady for you) and genuine. There are guitar solos, cool riffs, the works.

The records starts with a few rockers. Fear My Eyes is quite simply perfect. It’s riff is heavy and undeniably groove laden, the vocals are high, punchy and powerful, there’s a cool guitar solo and the lyrics are, well, nonsense. The perfect hard rock song. Genius follows suit, before a very cool little ballad called Piece of Mind, exhibiting Gianni’s Hughes voice perfectly. On The Verge and Next To You continue the hard-rocking before the real ballad of the album Promise. It’s almost entirely acoustic guitar and really soft singing. It’s not bad and serves as a great break-up of the harder stuff, because it’s full-tilt to the all-too-imminent end from here on out.

Following Promises comes Turn of The Tide (T.O.T), a seriously good rocking song. It’s about terrorism; something every hard rock band on the planet needs to write at least one song about following the 9/11 disaster. An excellent track, showing guitarist Sandro Pellegrini to be a perfectly capable player. One slight change in vocal delivery here – you know the way Chad Kroeger of Nickelback says “ye-ah” in some of their songs? Gianni does that. Sounds better than Kroeger though, which is nice. Next we have Black Tea, which is pretty rock-by-numbers, but with a cool solo. Believin’ is a quality piece of hard rock heart-felt delivery, with the slow, purposeful guitar playing and passionate vocals. Technically, I suppose it’s a ballad, but it’s not a soft one. The guitar playing is the best part; tasteful throughout. Album closer Falling Season is, as with many album closers, the long one. It’s a rocker, but it’s slower than all the others. It’s a “we’re destroying our own World” kind of song, with some voice samples during the lengthy instrumental ending. A good song and an excellent way to end the album.

If all modern hard rock albums were like this rock wouldn’t keep dying every 10 years or so, or whenever it was the last time someone claimed “rock is dead”. This is a solid debut album from a clearly talented band. They have the potential be to be huge. Unfortunately, they also have the potential to be twisted into a commercial rock band. Let’s hope AFM aren’t that way inclined.

“ pure, unfiltered, grooving ”

Tracklist: Fear My Eyes / Genius / Piece of Mind / On The Verge / Next To You / Promise / T.O.T. / Black Tea / Believin’ / Falling Season

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Hard Rock, Pure Inc.