Album Notes

Regen Magazine

PlacidPosted: Sunday, March 02, 2008
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor
Review by: Ilker Yücel (www.regenmag.com)

BIOGRAPHY
There are always many a positive thing to be said for a band that follows a D.I.Y. aesthetic to release their music on their own terms. Such is the case with Southern California's Placid, a group that has been lingering in the Los Angeles underground for a number of years, just waiting to be discovered by an unsuspecting crowd in search of some heavy-hitting industrial rock. The band was originally a five-piece, fronted by Keith Pokracki, with his brother Cameron on drums, guitarist/programmer Jeff Oakley, keyboardist George Smith, and bassist Geoff Lampton. Performing a variety of shows in and around their native area, the band released their first official album in 2003. ZeroZero2 presented listeners with a sound as aggressive and abrasive as the best industrial rock had to offer, with caustic synthesizers and complex percussion arrangements mixed with raging guitars and Pokracki's vitriolic voice. Shortly thereafter, Lampton and Smith left the group, leaving the band to perform as a trio for a time before Oakley too departed. The future of Placid was uncertain, as over the course of the next several years, the Pokracki brothers would find themselves in a continuing streak of changing lineups. Finally in 2007, the band has landed on a stable lineup including guitarist Matt Treihart, and released One Step from Rehab, also known as ZeroZero3. With a new lineup and a new lease on musical life, Placid is poised to take the industrial rock world by storm with their audio assault; they're waging the musical war on their own terms, combating trends to present us with their alternative to a scene over-saturated with stylistic clones.