This band have me all kind of messed up. Not messed up, in a hungover kind of way with a blinder behind the eyes, a plant pot full of sick and a stolen traffic light blinking at you like a three eyed metallic beast in the corner of the room, no, not that type of messed up. I mean messed up in a slightly discombobulated way, a slight unease, a tension that builds in the neck and ends up in your guts, gently turning like a shit flavoured slushy machine. I think it’s partly because I know for absolute certain that I heave heard of this Chicagoan quartet Without Waves before, but I can’t for the life of me remember when, where and how. I recognise their schtick but can’t put my finger on when. Anyway, that’s my problem and I’m not forcing you to read this shite right? I only mention this fact upon lending my ears to this their second full length effort because it could well be, that I haven’t heard Without Waves before at all, confused, well yes, you’ve every right to be, but let me explain.
There are bands around, that have this tendency to do what I call the magpie manoeuvre, and that, gentle reader, is when a band take flight and purloin, pillage and pinch from a variety of music sources to create their own heady brew and hope that the collective sum of their stolen parts are just ‘original’ enough to pass muster and allow them to tour and make a living for themselves. And so it comes to pass that Without Waves have contrived to make the most confusing and perplexing audio experience I have committed myself to in the last few years and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that. There is part of me that thinks that Without Waves are the emperors new clothes (and not just the clothes but the cock and balls flapping in the warm breeze of an early morning in March) where they are throwing so much metaphorical shit at a wall in an effort to not simply to see if some of it sticks but rather they have taken said basket of shite and given a Victorian 2 up, 2 down house a thorough four coat polish of poo. There is SOOOO much going here that its jarring, the type of jarring that comes from being knocked off your bike and into a wall that has been festooned with metal spikes and stinging nettles.
Its mathcore, nu-metal, post hardcore, alt rock, space rock, metalcore, prog and trad metal, phasing in an out of these various sub genres in the blink of an eye. It has elements of Korn, Slipknot, Red Chord, Sixth, Static X and that’ s just on album opener ‘Good Grief’…never has there been such a great example of nominative determinism in a song title. It’s overwhelming, like having seas sickness on top of a hangover whilst smashing your self in the eye with a hammer. I can’t for the life of me work out if I am enjoying or enduring the songs. On the face of it, given the myriad and complexity of the musical touch points, I should be falling head over heels with this collection of songs, giving it portions of gilded praise and breathless platitudes. It has the stop start dynamics of mathcore pioneers The Dillinger Escape Plan, and that should be enough to crown this, the greatest album in the history of albums, but I can’t. And I don’t know why. The playing is cranium strainingly, the production, juicy, fat and expansive BUT, with this huge cavalcade of musical influences it just doesn’t quite gel. It feels just a little smug and overly pleased with itself, where the music is making a point of how difficult this must be to play. And this dichotomy of thoughts in general, coalesce on the track ‘Set and Setting’ which has soft vocals a plenty that rest on a genuinely gorgeous guitar riff that recalls bands such as Hum and Spotlights, a gargantuan riff that hoves into view on the horizon like a twister of a Kansas plain but it then segues into something far less memorable and engaging. It’s almost as if the band can’t sit still, like a nervous teenager on a first date or a prisoner on death row attempting to stuff KFC into his dry mouth on the day of his execution.
I am at a loss as to what I feel about ‘Comedian’, it’s vast in its aspirations, and at times it does manage to acquiesce to the band’s musical mission statement, scaling highs at various periods during the album, but there just seems to be a lack of cohesion that serves to undermine some of the goodness available here. In the quieter, more serene and circumspect moments, there lies the beating heart of this record and it’s here that I would urge the band to concentrate their collective efforts rather than the more stock, mathcore/nu-metal elements that only serve to confuse and bore rather than entertain.
(6/10 Nick Griffiths)
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