Review of NAME - Memoirs From My Sweetheart, The Whore

For those of you who were young children in the 70’s and suffered from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the now-discontinued drug, Cylert, is something you might be familiar with. I took that awful drug for nine years. The reason I’m saying this is because Memoirs From My Sweetheart, The Whore, by California Bay Area residents N.A.M.E. ( or New Approach to Martyrs Expressions), have created possibly the closest musical equivalent to the experience of not only neglecting to take my daily pill, but also the effect of consuming large amounts of sugar as well.

The first minute and a half of “Killer Whales, Man” is pure chaos that barely holds any sort of frantic groove, switching off between bizarre blasts to lumbering double bass-heavy, monolithic stoner rhythms. The title track starts out with pretty regulation stuttering staccato, with screams aligned with moderately successful belched vocals, and then zones out into whispers and barely audible cymbals, a stomping mid-paced march, then a brand X breakdown. Eventually things fade into acoustics and killer bass work, embellished with light smooth vocals before concluding with an energized clean power chord flourish. It’s not bad.

When “The Spark Of Divinity” rolls around with its thrashing gallop intro, things suddenly slip into this weird NOLA-influenced, thumping sludge situation, keeping things at a good headbanging groove. A little Pantera shows through here. Clean vocals return but don’t sound all that confident even though they’re done well, but there’s a little bit of filler towards the middle of this tune. It’s nothing offensive or dumbed-down, and the fade-out ending was nice touch. This is where the attention going bye-bye thing ties in.

It may be a silly way to describe it, but N.A.M.E.’s performance is like a kid getting hopped up heavily on some primo teeth-rotting sugar products, and then running around like a lunatic. The kid then breaks something (or runs into a wall), hides and groans, panting curled up in a ball for a little while before repeating the cycle over and over until exhaustion finally takes its final toll for the day. It doesn’t really sound cathartic or emotional in any way, and much of the songwriting contains no cohesive threads, which wouldn’t be a problem if the vibe of the music was more heartfelt, rather than driven by an overabundance of energy.

If Botch or The Dillinger Escape Plan are in your collection, you might want to check out these tunes on their MySpace page, and the band is currently working on a full-length for Gomek Records that will hopefully be released before the end of the year. Maybe this conjures up bad feelings for me, but in the end Memoirs…is compelling enough and executed great, and potentially gives a little insight to what a little more time and effort will produce. A little sloppy, but interesting technique.

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Memoirs From My Sweetheart, The Whore

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