Marion Raven - Heads Will Roll

Marion Raven - Heads Will Roll

Glossy hard rock, Norwegian style. Miss We Are Witch Guardians Unite Herself
by Chad GrischowOctober 20, 2006Submit Tweet Share +1 Share If you were a fan of summertime guilty pleasure Rock Star: Supernova, the debut EP from Norwegian rocker Marion Raven can be summed up as what Tommy Lee and crew would have sounded like had they chosen the innocent southern gal Dana to front them. The music has a sharper edge than Avril Levigne, but Raven's sugary vocals are much sweeter, making the difference between the two negligible. The six-track EP opens in menacing fashion, with Raven taking a raspy tone to start "Spit You Out". The vocals gradually get glossier, eventually turning into the candied pop tones found elsewhere on the album. A fiery guitar solo near the conclusion of the storming rocker gives it the soul, and freewheeling fun, of a '80s hair band. Doing her best Amy Lee impression, Raven turns in a soaring string-infused number on "13 Days". The Evanescence tinged tune does the best job of showing off Raven's solid vocal work, although the song itself falls limp in comparison to the harder rocking fare. Sounding like a sugarcoated cover of Buckcherry's "Next 2 You", Raven struts around the bluesy rocker "All I Wanna Do Is You"; complete with Buckcherry's Keith Nelson adding a dash of smoldering guitar. In the spirit of hard rock anthems of the past, the lighthearted "Good 4 Sex" is the most satisfying blend of shimmering pop vocals and hard stomping rock. The shout-a-long hook "You're good for sex, but you're bad for me" is as infectious as any on the EP; recalling times when rock reigned supreme over the airwaves, with the likes of Poison and Motley Crue. Raven opens the acoustic strummer "Let Me Introduce Myself" by saying, "This is a song about my ex-boyfriend's new girl". It may be cliché for a female singer-songwriter album to carry a bitter ex-lover song, but at least Raven takes a fresh approach by spraying venom in the direction of the new girl rather than her man. Classifying Raven's Heads Will Roll EP as 'rock' is a bit of a stretch, but at its heart that is what it is; well, musically if not vocally. Calling Raven's vocals 'pop' is not a slam, as she has a strong enough voice to make her worthy of some attention. The vocals and music combine to crank out a decent batch of candied metal for the masses. Definitely Download:1. "Good 4 Sex"2. "Let Me Introduce Myself (Acoustic)"3. "Heads Will Roll"