Poughkeepsie, New York is the birthplace for the wonderfully named and furiously talented band Genghis Tron who have engineered the most peculiar and welcome return since Lazarus. ‘It’s Genghis Tron Jim, but not as you know it’. It would be remiss of me not to mention that as this stage, that I am a fan of the band and have poured over and gorged on both of their previous albums (2006’s ‘Dead Mountain Mouth’ and 2008’s ‘Board Up The House’). At the time, their electronically anchored mayhem, was a breath of fresh air amongst the clag stinking mayonnaise being served up courtesy of hipster, cagoule wearing metalcore bands, more interested in breakdowns, misogyny and posturing than songs. Genghis Tron stood aside from such moribund machinations and created two albums of cutting-edge metal soundscapes that were dual purposed, and precision tooled drum machine programmed slabs of grindcore led blast beats, overlayed with screamed lyrics. Genghis Tron slathered their whole oeuvre in EDM styled musical interludes and samples that repurposed the dance music scene of all their best beats producing warm, but diamond tipped, sonic landscapes.
It’s an unholy racket that belied the fact that, at the time, Genghis Tron comprised just three members Michael Sochynsky (keyboards, programming), Hamilton Jordan (guitar) and Mookie Singerman (vocals and keyboards) coalescing to the band sounding like a jazzy Godflesh which had mated with UK spazzcore protagonists Rolo Tomassi.
And so, Genghis Tron have returned, minus their original singer (replaced by Tony Wolski) but with actual flesh and blood in the bass and drums department, as the band have evolved from the innards of a computer, to being a fully living and breathing organism. And certainly, in the drumming department, they have recruited a human octopus in the form of Sumac and Baptists legend Nick Yacyshn, who is about as close to perfection in the drumming world as you can get and adds a welcome dollop of heft and musical best in class to Genghis Tron 2.0.
So, to their new album (which is why we are all here…well that’s why I’m here). How does it compare and stand against their back catalogue having endured a ten-year hiatus? Well, it must be said it’s a contrast all right. It’s like the band have put on their big boy pants, taken a look at themselves in the mirror and decided that they are going to cast aside some of the silly accoutrements of the so called ‘Nintendocore’ scene (see Math The Band, Minibosses) and created a new band in the image of the old one if that makes sense? Gone are the blast beats and electronica (for the most part). Gone are the screamo vocals, replaced with lush, atmospheric soundscapes, riffs that gently lick your cheek, songs that are bathed in sunlight, melodies that burst through a stormy sky like the little alien fella through John Hurt’s chest in Alien. “I’m a big boy now Ma!” screams (well gently sings) this album from the rooftops. It feels mature, sculptured, it ebbs and flows like an early morning tide on a dusty July morning in Newquay. It takes it’s time getting to where it’s going, bubbling like a collapsed lung under an operating theatre’s lights, before diving down a rabbit hole into more concrete and steel aural territories where the more dance/electronica flavours of this album rise to the surface and take the edge off further.
The guitars are turned down, well not turned down per se, just repurposed, less of a blunt instrument of trauma, more that they have been cultivated into a vessel for opium infused thoughts to imbibe themselves into your mind. And if all that sounds like all the metal-tinged heaviness has been channelled out of GT 2.0, then you are not really that far off the mark. This is band that has not just turned a corner, but in the spirt of the film Inception, have taken said street (and corner) bent it to their will and created a new landscape entirely. I would take the Pepsi challenge if I had not heard of Genghis Tron before and played this new album and then their back catalogue and I would one hundred percent have not picked up on the fact, they were indeed created and played by the same band, such is the volte face on display here, courtesy of this new collection of songs.
Personally, this album ticks all my boxes when I am in the mood for some escapism. It’s a joyously complex body of work that owes absolutely nothing to its former heavier and more metallic origins. It is more akin to bands such as say Intronaut, *shels, bits of Filter and the lighter moments of Russian Circles, where the heaviness comes from the compression of several layers of musicality, rather than a singular instrument. It is the amalgam, the totality, the sum of the band, that combine to contrive a challenging and expansive album that is possibly one of the most beautiful things I have heard this year. It’s a heady experience, and yes, I realise I am verging into hyperbolic territory here, but in retrospect, I stand behind every single word of this review. DO NOT, under any circumstances, buy this album expecting anything even remotely akin to what you’ve heard from Genghis Tron before, because this album represents being as close as it is possible to be, to being a new band as you can get without changing said band’s name. Dream Weapon is a glorious, emotionally charged, and magnificent album that has the capacity to change your life.
(Nick Griffiths 9.9/10 (0.1 off for not changing the band name))
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