Julian Silversuit - Self-titled EP (1996)
A striking black and white photograph of a man with long black hair stares at me. Who is this? A young Tommy Wiseau? A Norwegian black metal legend sans make-up? Did Brandon Lee put out an album I wasn't aware of?
No, it's a dude named Julian Silversuit who, at some point in the 1996, recorded this four song demo tape in Houston, TX. While made in the era of alternative rock and then emerging post-grunge, this demo encapsulates pop rock of the 80s, an era of trends like glam metal and hard rock, genres that are best known for their ironically "soft" power ballads.
Two original songs and two covers make up the EP, trading off from straight-forward rock that wouldn't sound out of place at the end of Top Gun and/or adapted to Street Fighter ("If I had A Girl..."/"Looking For Love") and between two slower ballads ("Tears of Joy"/"He Don't Know You"). The ballads feature sax and piano solos and place Julian's vocals at the forefront. He's a actually a decent singer, I can't help but compare him to Meatloaf, with whom he shares a unrestrained, quasi-operatic style. Similarly, the lyrics are anything but subtle, opening with "If I had a girl like you / I'd shoot myself, I'd shooot myself." Yep, no minced words here.
For a demo tape, this is well-recorded, duplicated onto a type II cassetted and recorded by engineer/mixer Rock Romano, the only person credited who I could track down online. Most would conclude this oozes of cheesiness, and I'd be hard-pressed to argue that point, but I think it's endearing too. I have no idea how many times I repeated the last few seconds of the tape, which concludes with this epic delivery of these lyrics: "-I swear he's never known the ways of luh-uuuve-ah" So wherever you are Julian Silversuit, a sincere thank you, I got a kick out of this tape.
[Side B is identical to Side A]
Technical info
Label: Self-released
Case: Norelco
J-card: Cardstock
C-30 Type II chrome
Editing notes: normalized to -0.3 db
