The Lawrence, Kansas driving rock quartet Amore Et Bellum takes their name from the Latin. It means love and war and that’s how the band sees the music that they write represents. They take as their odes the genres of blues, hard rock, and jazz and tribal compositions. On their self-titled release Amore Et Bellum they do a good job of balancing out playing songs that represent the trials and tribulations that one learns to deal with artistically as they encounter them.
Amore Et Bellum wastes no time digging into things as they open the record with “Take the House.” The mixture of jazz and funk slowly broods into a gritty and cohesive dark rock song that begins to jam and stomp near the end with a fiery blaze. To accompany this fiery song one needs a powerful vocalist and the band has found one to fill the role, Tahnsui Thawngmung. Even when she is speak-singing as she does on “Witches Brew,” a dirty riffing rocker with head pounding drums and thumping bass, she is able to keep up with no problem. She has about her vocals that great sneer that artists such as Joan Jett and Pat Benetar were so good at without seeming like they were trying too hard. Later on the breakdown of “Brothers Blood” is a surefire hard rock radio hit, full of fluid guitar rock, Thawngmung does a bit of a cappella if only to show that she can belt it out just as beautifully as she can snarl. This range is then quieted down on the slow beginnings of “Satan is a She” which later erupts to become one of the band’s most intricate songs as it goes from lows to highs to hard edges. Its tonal shifts are pulled off perfectly and show that the band is more than just a bar rocking jam outfit; also that they can pull off things in the studio too. This also goes for the feisty rocker “War Cry.” Amore Et Bellum is definitely a band that I think will go far, especially as they begin to branch out their sound and experiment a little bit more with their songwriting and begin to explore a bit more of a sound outside the typical confines of rock n’ roll.
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