Artist: Last Stop China Town 
   Title: Vital Signs
   Label: Woodhill Records

'Vital Signs' is the debut release from Last Stop China Town, a five piece who are about reek havoc on the music journalists of the world with this new album.  The band are one of the new generation of young bands who refuse to be labelled into one genre or another, but instead want to have that unique ability that most bands want originality.

The album opens up with ‘Just Ashes’ a track that is full of great guitar riffs and a great melody that makes you sit up and take notice from the off.

The album continues with the excellent ‘Hollywood Ending’, a track that suits the voice of singer Alan Bentley so well.  The track powers along with a couple of varying tempo changes around the chorus, but it’s the vocals of Bentley that make this track for me.

The album takes on a sombre mood with the dark tones of ‘Erase’, a slow builder that lets the rhythm section of Mary Martin on bass and Lewis Gwinnell on drums come into their own.

The voice of Bentley has definite gothic undertones and they are clearly present on the mood shifter ‘Let The Dice Decide’.  However, the pace is soon picked up again on ‘This Gift’ while the dark moody vocals remain consistent on not only this track, but also the remaining tracks.

The band seen to have an affinity with the slow building songs as the next couple of tracks ‘Opinions Collide’ and ‘Divine’, although the track of the album for me has to be ‘Mind Games’.  A track that has some moments of brilliance from guitarist Robin Billingham with the change of pace toward the end of the track.

The up tempo feeling is kept up with the title track ‘Vital Signs’, a track that will have you tapping your fingers along to the infectious back beat.

The more moody feel to the album makes a return on ‘Nothing Left To Take’ with Bentley giving his darkest vocal performance to the album so far.  Another outstanding track on the album is ‘Fall Behind’.  The track starts with a very impressive drum intro and builds into a crescendo of drums and guitars.

Once again its time for a couple more slow builders from the band with ‘Bet On Red’ and ‘Taking Me Under’ before the band unleash the second single off the album ‘Soldier of Fortune’.  A track that stands out from the rest not only because it starts off at full throttle, but the fact that it maintains that up tempo mood throughout the song something that is sometimes lacking in some of the previous songs.

This is a very decent debut release from the band and I think that the dark vocals will find the band many fans from the Goth rock crowd as well as the new breed fans.

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