Marzi

Marzi is a three-piece metal band that’s pretty much cut with nothing but Texas boogie and the classic rock purveyed by yesteryear’s guitar heroes. Marzi (a.k.a. Maziar Montazeri) is also a guitarist, hailing from Houston, who apparently once played with Philip Anselmo in Superjoint Ritual. The Need is Marzi’s debut disc.

The record opens promisingly enough with “Never Again,” a dead-on piece of contemporary heavy rock: big riffs, hooks, stellar musicianship, all given a production job that would more than suffice for 99 percent of major-label metal releases. But then comes the sprawling, directionless middle, composed of riffs randomly lumped together and affixed with song titles (“Blind,” “Wake Up”). There’s even a bit of B-grade Lone Star State flag-waving (“Heavy as Texas”). Everything still sounds great, and the musicianship is more than adequate, but there just isn’t any musical or lyrical focus to these tracks.

The curious thing here is that the title track is little more than two minutes of vaguely atmospheric soloing. This bears mention for two reasons: First, naming your debut CD after space-filler, or vice versa, is absurd. Second, the “song” is the only self-indulgent moment on the record. And that’s no mean feat given Marzi’s self-proclaimed status as a “local guitar hero.” In fact, Marzi’s playing becomes obtrusive on only a couple of rhythm-guitar passages where there’s just one too many pick strokes. By and large, he manages to restrain his guitar work to suit the material.

Nowhere is this more evident than on the closing two tunes, “Tomorrow” and “Waiting for the Sun,” in which the band manages to interweave modern heavy aesthetics with the free-flowing yet logical sensibilities typically seen only through 20 years of British-accented rock history. It’s just a shame there weren’t more cuts like these.