One of the most baffling stories of the decade has been Shinobi Ninja’s inability to break pop. There are few better live bans than the hip hop, funk, hard rock band who have been pounding at the pop door and pounding and pounding and it just hasn’t happened.
I’m not sure if the reason is simply the year break between their first album and their second album, it sure felt as though some parts of the story were missing. However, since breaking with their long term manager they have released an album, a recorded live on the tour bus mixtape and now the astounding new EP Artistic Visions.
Artistic Visions is their best recorded work to date, this is not to slight Rock Hood –which did not live up to their live performance, though really, what did? It might be to slight the unwieldy ambitious Escape From New York and Return To double . A difficult second album. Never before have they got a song on record as great as the eight minute guitar rock tour de force “Honey Trap”, written as a band, performed live in the studio, he is just perfection. Not just a standout on the EP, the guitar solo is just… it is amazing, it is pure melody taking over your brain while the band harmonize in the back of the track like a wall of sign.
Definitely a masterpiece for them, “My Friend Amy” is darker and stretched by just a minute but the bluishness of the track makes it a more dour track riding hard on a good repitious lick for a little too long. The other three songs see the band change from hip hiop masters to classic blues rockist and it all works very well.
It is hard to keep up with the bands artistic vision nowadays, they aren’t who they were that’s for sure, but still they retain the essence of the tightness, the gimme a beer and a shotness, of the band.
Grade: A-
