This record pretty much defined my 16th year, and like many of those records you love during your formative years, this one stayed with me, becoming the background noise of my implicit memory.
This strikes me as a record that could have really changed the game in heavy music. It's radically different guitar tones, approach to riff writing and production were like nothing I had heard before and nothing I have heard since. Yet perhaps it is something precious because of the fact that it has not (yet) changed the game. Mainstream success would have over played it to the point of complacent over-familiarity, thus cheapening it and it's impact. So maybe this will be one of those records that musicians will cite as influential in years to come rather than now, a slow burner.
The first thing one hears when putting on this record (after happening across it for a bargain in the late 'Music City' in Dun Laoghaire in 2006) is the TITANIC opening riff of 'Escape From Hellview'. Now this is a proper monster of a riff, a finger twister to play if you too are a guitarer (yes I did mean to spell it that way). This heavy sack beating soon gives way to a minimalist verse made cold by frontman and evil genius Deron Miller's reverberating voice. Then an intimidating link, “turn back, the silence is deafening”, before the reprise of the ELEPHANT-WITH-A-TRUNK-FULL-OF-COKE-RIFF!!! I adore that riff just in-case you can't tell. As a matter of interest, this track is part of an ongoing theme in Cky records: Hellview being a fictional town in which the events of 'Escape From Hellview' and '96 Quite Bitter Beings' from the previous record take place.
I've noticed a loose pattern in heavy records lately. A good few seem to do this: open the record with a heavy bruiser track to grab the listener's attention then follow it with a more subtle 2nd track. I can't quite tell if that was done on this record and that brings me to this point, all ten tracks on I.D.R are of equal quality, no lapses anywhere. Even the joke track 'Plastic Plan' is still perfectly listen-able. The second track in question was 'Flesh Into Gear'. A great , great track all round, every bit as complex as the preceding Hellview but with an altogether different feel and sound. I think this one would be well known relative to the rest of the album, there was a fair bit of exposure for the video around the time of release. I will speak more on videos later!
At track 4 we have 'Attached at the Hip', a bizarre effects laden Lars-Ulrich-learns-a-funk-beat sort of affair with equally bizarre lyrical content. This is another moment of the album to which I was hooked from the first listen, always a good sign! Synth sounds feature all over this track, lending it a unique sound even on this already unique record.
As usual I will limit myself to writing about 3 stand-out tracks and leave the rest for the reader to discover. However I will mention this, the band not only made a ten track album but also made a DVD featuring a music video for every track! And each one different and equally well thought-out (with the exception of 'Flesh Into Gear' I think it is fair to mention).
Check out this record if you want something that cannot be easily defined, its the best kind of blend of unique and accessible and has not been bettered by the band since.
“Work the parts responsibly
Piece them biologically
Release them incomplete and
Barely will they think or breathe...”
Edward Gerard Brophy.
No comments:
Post a Comment