The album moves through three stages - from Electronic to Melancholic, intense Alternative to Heavy Metal and Hip-Hop through its 14-track journey with an intro and a rather funeral-ish outro.
The INTRO is a short Electronic track, which introduces the band and the album. ACCEPTABLE is a wonderfully crafted track, with the main attraction being the female vocals given by Linda. The track alternates between Progressive and Jazz in between, and has some delightful lyrics to accompany the melodious tunes. SIGN is a heavier Nu-Metal track with Linda hitting some high notes with her voice with much grace. There is an epic background on the song at all times, and the drummer does a rather fantastic job with his sticks. EMPTY HIGHWAY is a decent Electronic-Progressive track with fine lyrics, but fails to make a mark in front of the other good ones on the album.
The pleasing thing about listening to THE SCAVENGER PROJECT’s songs is the way they’ve used the vocalists in each one. There is not a point in between where you feel the vocals are dragging along. They have been used skillfully, with multiple vocals in some and programmed in a way that suits the mood of the song.
Come to some of the softer tracks. BEYOND REACH has a pretty feel-good Electronic intro. One of the more Experimental tracks of the album, various effects have been put to good use here. Hip-Hop enters midway before it finishes off on a higher scale. RUNAWAY is about a girl in search of her soul mate, with matching Alternative work on the guitars and vocals. Loved the solo during the final few minutes. COLD PAVEMENT and ZIKA are intense and hard Alternative tracks, exploring the feelings
experienced on losing your lover. ZIKA takes you completely by surprise by its orchestral rendition of the vocals throughout, making it sound like a tribute-to-natural-disaster-victims type of a song, a very nice one though! Tap your feet with NOT JUST A DREAM - another beautiful track with saxophones, sweet acoustics in the background and an excellent chorus on the vocals.
Enter the third phase of the album and get surprised again with the sudden Heavy Metal riffs and Hip-Hop feel in GAYA. Very neatly done, do notice the little recurring notes in the background during the main verse. And about 1:53 into the track, was that a bit of "Bhangra" from our North-East friends? Sure enough! A complete entertaining track which sings about “living life on the edge of your seats” and much good sounds. NWUG is full blown Metal with growls being introduced and double bass on thedrums. FIVE IN THE MORNING is an acoustic finisher to the album, and talks about a hung-over morning where the singer longs for his girl. The keyboard adds an ethereal atmosphere to the whole song.
So that’s EMPTY HIGHWAY for you – high on experimentation, genre-span, instrumental goodness.
Bottom Line
If you talk about a time and place where Indian Rock bands are really beginning to add their own little contributions to the definition of the genre, then Progressive seems to be a very widely tried genre, where loads of decent groups are fiddling with this fantastic style and molding it to their own roots, with much good results. In this context, I’d consider EMPTY HIGHWAY by SCAVENGER PROJECT to be a highly significant effort with its much-talented ‘Electronic-Rockgressive’ line-up. Have you checked them out yet?
