TREMENDOUS – Transcendence on the Cheap – The Acoustic Sessions EP

The Birmingham-based glam rock outfit known as Tremendous released the rather impressive and well-written Relentless four years ago and garnered a lot of positive reviews and praise from fans and members of the press for that delightfully catchy piece of work. This stripped-down, singer-songwriter-esque acoustic EP is something completely different to the aforementioned album, and what it does is that it displays Mark Dudzinski’s talent for crafting accessible and soulful tunes with nuances and subtle layers to them in a slightly different context. The six tracks that constitute this release are all fairly concise and cohesive, musically speaking, and none of them outstay their welcome as such, but a couple of them are definitely more enjoyable and pleasing to the ears than the others, namely the memorable and gorgeous “Hell to Pay” and the emotive “The Wrong Remains,” whereas the rest are more standard fare and arguably lack longevity and true spark.

There is a refreshing spirit to these compositions not to mention heaps of promise, and although I prefer the vigor and crunch of Relentless to these acoustic renditions, Transcendence on the Cheap is worth looking into as its calm and reflective nature can be rather appealing depending on one’s mood. My only complain is that it is a little too uneven with respect to the quality of the material, but it lacks neither direction nor purpose. Again, it is something different to what these guys usually do, and Relentless is definitely the place to start if you are new to the band, but I could easily see this EP appeal to the more openminded listeners out there who dig mellow music.