"American Falcon" by American Falcon

About three weeks ago or so, I had posted a link to a song performed by writer Chris La Tray’s band American Falcon. Recently, I took out my wallet and after prying it open with a crowbar, went to his website, clicked the link and bought the c.d.

This past Saturday (5/12) I picked up the c.d. at the post office and spent the day baptizing the sound system in my 2009 Altima with it. With the weather being absolutely gorgeous, it was the perfect day to listen to some good old fashion rock music. You know the kind that I’m talking about right? The kind that you hear at a friend’s outdoor party, or at a very small venue/bar, or at small town festival. The kind that makes you say, “Holy f’n sht, that is some seriously sick stuff!” The kind that makes you believe the cover liner note, “Twice the volume, 3x as salty”.

 American Falcon is what very few people call an authentic power trio, in that all they have is three members that play three instruments: guitar, bass and drum. As for the type of music that they play, I would say (and this is my opinion) that it’s very strong hard rock with leanings towards metal.

American Falcon’s debut c.d., simply entitled, “American Falcon” contains seven tracks that clock in at just a shade under forty-two and a half minutes. The playing is exceptionally solid, the vocals are consistent, the majority of the tracks kick major ass, and overall, it’s a pretty solid conceptual c.d.

I know you’re probably questioning that statement of seven tracks/forty-two and a half minutes, simply because most c.d.’s that clock in at that time usually have almost double the amount of tracks. However, with the exception of two tracks, everything else clocks in at the very minimum four minutes.

Those two tracks are something that you usually don’t find on a studio album. Most bands that have tracks that clock in at seven minutes are usually found on live albums, when they’re throwing in extended guitar/drum solos. However, American Falcon does an excellent job of pulling off those two long tracks.

The first long track is a song entitled “Blood Drunk”, and it serves as an excellent intro to the song “Tallulah Black”, which is to say that it’s dark and moody, which keeps with the general theme of the c.d.

The other long track is one (about twelve and a half minutes), that while the concept was pretty good, the execution was average. Track #7 is entitled “The Beast of Bray Road”, which is based on a non-fiction novel of the same name by Linda S. Godfrey, and it features two spoken word parts. One of the spoken word parts is from the horror novel and the other is from a Wikipedia entry.

While the horror novel excerpt was an interesting tease, the Wikipedia excerpt is where I had problems. The problem I had was that the background music, while very good, drowned out spoken word excerpt. And the spoken word excerpt was so overly long that there were times where I wanted to shut the c.d. off.

Overall, the c.d. was a real joy and experience to listen to, especially since I don’t get a chance to listen to that kind of rock music anymore. You certainly won’t hear it on commercial radio because it’s refreshingly original, and you know commercial radio doesn’t really like refreshingly original music.

I highly recommend purchasing this c.d. if you’re a devotee of great rock/metal music, and if this was an Amazon rating, I would give 4 ½ stars.

And in case anyone didn’t figure it out at the beginning, this c.d. was not given to me gratis. I wholeheartedly spent my money to acquire this c.d. of a local Montana band. Remember gang, local music is the best kind of music and you should support your local music scene as much as you possibly can.