Artist: VOTA
Album: VOTA
Label: INO Records
Release Date: February 10, 2009
Reviewed By: Luke J
Tracklisting:
01. Hard To Believe
02. Be Mine
03. Love’s Taken Over
04. Honestly
05. Not Finished
06. I’ll Go
07. Give It To Me
08. Free To Fail
09. Save Ourselves
10. Bye Bye
11. In My Heart
When it comes to the acronym you have to be extremely careful in its use. According to dictionary.com an acronym is “a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or series of words”. So you see, the reader can easily decide that they want to use your acronym as their own. For example, ETA could mean Easy To Access, LOL could mean Live Our Lives, or VOTA could mean Very Open To Anything. I hope you catch my drift.
The band VOTA has experienced problems when trying to find a name. They experimented with Casting Pearls, but failed to make that name stick due to confusion with a group you may have heard of; Casting Crowns. So they have finally found a name and it happens to be an acronym for Vibration Open Test Assembly (according to my research). I try to search for words to relate that to the music, the sound, or the band and I find it extremely difficult. This points to the outcome of their new self-titled album as a whole. This CD, titled simply VOTA, does not give me any reason to listen more than once or twice. I have questions when I listen, like “are connections in the music industry all it takes to get signed to a major label?”, or “why do musicians make music just to have that music get lost in the smorgasbord of similar bands?” When I try to categorize the music made by VOTA it is very easy because there are close to thirty other bands like it in the Christian market. If you don’t know what I mean, let me explain. The sound has a distinct rock ‘n’ roll sound and consists of a lot of guitar chords being strummed – Newsboys style, bass guitar being picked – Jeremy Camp style, and drums that rock – TobyMac style. I’m not saying that VOTA has copied the bands I have listed, but I’m sure if you played both back-to-back the sound would be hard to differentiate. The CD does contain a lot of “radio-friendly” hits (I use the term loosely), but that is where I have a problem, I don’t usually like the “radio-friendly” hit. The band has not taken any risks with the music, therefore, VOTA gets lost with the score of similar sounding bands that have tried this before.
It wouldn’t be appropriate to end the review here because these words do not contain a hint of this CD being good. That being said, it is not hard to find positives here. VOTA is full of catchy guitar chords, amazingly positive lyrics, great radio playability, and it serves as a great alternative to what secular radio presents in Tom Cochrane or Bryan Adams. At least there are some positives to VOTA, much like there are positives to using an acronym. TTYL.
[Band Website] [MySpace] [INO Records]
Buy: MusiChristian
