Quadruple
Self Titled
6.8
What this band does, is take parts of Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar and Down, parts of Metallica and parts of Alice in Chains and combine them all into one big stew…type thing. The good news is that the parts they use are the better parts mainly. Yeah, the singer is doing the latter day Hetfield, but he tries, at least, not to waver into abject parroting, thus the Crowbar-ness. Yeah the drummer plays heavily grooved runs, but he keeps the double kicks and stops coming hard and often, thus the COC and Down-ness. And yeah the guitarists have a damn near perfect take on the best of the mid-paced thrash riff, augmenting it with chord progressions…or perhaps retrogressions… that basically keep this demo edgy and fun to listen to, thus Metallica and Alice in Chains. The head banging, foot stomping factor is pretty fucking high.
For all that this is, maybe a skoach too familiar sounding for some of us latter eclectic types. Apart from the truly corrosive guitar production this record could very easily have been released in 1991, and would probably been more at home. The singer’s cadence is a little forced sometimes, and some of the riffing ideas are clichéd. But the whole effort is somewhat saved by the louder than necessary, almost squelchy production that somehow just gives this shit an underground, DIY punch that helps it retain my interest. Every instrument is clearly audible, but the mix is so high that it sounds like one of those great old demos back when everything was tape machine driven.
If you can get a hold of this, I am going to go ahead and give it a recommend. It’s got that “thing” that makes it a good listen despite your possible reaction to my above descriptions. I don’t know how this band will hold up with a larger budget in the studio, but this is a cool CD. If nothing else, it fucking rocks and fills the empty space in my heart where the above mentioned bands used to reside. Give it a bash.
