Thoughts of Ionesco
The Scar Is Our Watermark
6.7
Synopsis: Compendium of post Rollins metalcore...
Boy, have I never followed this band’s career. Yet they have a compilation, a “greatest hits” if you will. So someone really dug them. I might have too had I known they existed. But I didn’t and it’s 2006 and I have no clue why I need a retrospective of a band that was barely out there.
The thing opens with a pretty neato little sludge riff, then goes on to become another hardcore styled, Fugazi biting remake of late eighties underground ideas grown stale from years of overuse. What I am saying is there is absolutely no reason for me to listen to this beyond agreeing to do reviews for this site, but there is nothing wrong with it, either. It is, unlike some other derivatives of better days, unrelenting and heavy. Kind of Melvins meets latter day Black Flag. The songs are plodding forces of nature that, like a snowstorm in February, I have seen over and over again.
The singer screams like he is being subjected to a debate over what constitutes true metal and the guitarists play simple riffs with a paucity of saturation. The rhythm section gets sabbathtastic. None of them are writing new pages in the book of musicianship. The production is raw and heavy, though it is a comp so the essential quality of the recordings varies.
The bottom line is that I already own plenty of this. It’s good enough for people who don’t. It’s a nonstop painfest and speaks to the soul of the angry. If I hadn’t lived 15 years ago this would excite me. Maybe you like snowstorms in February. Yeah? Grab it.
