Thesyre
Exist!
6.3
For some reason, I seem to end up reviewing a lot the single-track albums that pass through our doors, and after recently working my way through efforts by the likes of Scald and Blut Aus Nord, the next disc-long ditty to hit my inbox is from Canada’s Thesyre. The single-track album is a format usually associated with bands whose work leans to the experimental (Scald, Blut Aus Nord), the epic (Green Carnation, Edge of Sanity), or the, well, stoned (Sleep). More traditionally rooted music seems by its very nature to be less suited to extended and contorted structures. Thesyre aren't really a band that you can confine to a specific label tag, but their sound is based in traditional and well traveled genres, including black and vintage traditional and thrash metal, with a little punk rock ethic thrown in for good measure. There’s nothing too complicated about this song’s primary threads, and one might get the impression that it was a miscalculation to stretch what can be done in three minutes to eleven times that long. There’s some truth to that. On the other hand, breaking the song up every so often by devolving into stretches of interlude-like byways provides a more interesting presentation than just running through these ideas in discrete three-minute bites.
The most substantial gripe with Exist! is that it stumbles early, and by the time it gets back on track, you’ve probably already forgotten why you should care. As the intro fades in, the tribal drum pattern and guitar lines work fairly well, sounding for a moment like some kind of cross between Killing Joke and more organic Ministry, but as soon as the verse kicks in, the band reverts to toothless black and roll riffing. The band sets the cruise control and chugs along over mid tempo muted power chords and the occasional lick and fill. The thrashy breaks sprinkled in help matters some, but it’s still a fairly dry offering. Seven and a half minutes in, the band winds down their opening act, and meditates on a drum and bass pattern, while the guitar squeals in the distance. They build back up to a double time reprise and ride that a while before launching into some pedestrian solo work that stretches to near the song’s half way point, where the band adds some nice acoustics and swirling atmosphere. They inject a little punkish sneer as they kick in again, and continue to alternate between mid paced, quicker, and slower tension building stretches for the rest of the track. Exist! seems to grow into itself, and flows better as it progresses and ends with its best foot forward. There’s nothing flagrantly wrong with this track, other than it just simply doesn’t do much to get the blood pumping. Half a dozen listens made Exist! grow on me a little, but under normal circumstances this album wouldn’t have gotten enough spins to do so. Decent enough, but hardly essential.
