Say Yes To Flavor
The Dreams Manifest And The Sleeper Awakes
6.7
What did I get myself into, and what the hell is THIS? These are the first two questions I asked myself as Say Yes to Flavor’s “The Tape” kicked in. Granted, the band name lends itself to a certain je nous se WTF, but given that the world is running out of original monikers Say Yes to Flavor isn’t entirely unexpected. Neither is the album title The Dreams Manifest and the Sleeper Awakes. But, this hodgepodge of aurally assaulting grind, hardcore, ambient rock and post-metal IS genuinely perplexing.
Without the aid of the internet one might be inclined to believe this album is the result of a collective of deranged individuals. There’s so much going on in each song that one has to assume there are like five or so people throwing ideas at the wall, seeing if they stick and then combining all those that do in fact stick to form a song. Not so. This is a one-man project. That one man is named Jonathan Carpenter and he hails from Indiana. Kudos to Mr. Carpenter for the tomfoolery and trickery. You have mastered the art of illusion well.
Grind and deathcore fans are the more immediate demographic for this album’s consumption. The full-tilt punch in the face energy it emotes will appeal strongly to that ilk. That said, there’s more here than that tag would suggest. On the latter half of “Introductions Please” Carpenter hits a rather stunning riff that gives the whole song a strangely emotive quality. Fortunately, he continues to play with ambience throughout the rest of The Dreams Manifest. Part of the draw here is just how unpredictable the mood he creates can be; blast-beat mayhem one second and Pelican-like ambience the next.
This is neither a failed experiment nor a finely-tuned smorgasbord of sound. It lies somewhere in between, but closer to finely-tuned than failed. More importantly, the music within is halfway unique and compelling. In a world where the number of words in a band name often equate to sound, that’s pretty damn refreshing.
