It's time for a couple more records I have something to say about, but not enough to warrant writing more than this.
Lansdowne - Medicine
It always amazes me how there are periods of time, and within each of them dozens of bands that sound exactly like one another. It's either people with an incredible sense of imitation who also have no shame about possessing no identity of their own, or there is some freak occurrence where a particular sound is pervasive in our micro-evolution. I know which side of that discussion I'm going to fall on.
Lansdowne is radio rock exactly like you would expect it to be. It sounds a lot like Saint Asonia, and all the other bands that do the same thing. It's solid stuff, but not at the peak of what the genre can offer. It's decently fun stuff, and I can't complain about the construction of the hooks. It does what it needs to. What I can complain about are the lyrics, which buy into every stereotype of the genre, where women are there to use after the guys get drunk, because sobriety is treated like a disease. The one that bothers me is "One Shot", where the narrator appears to be hooking up with a woman he knows has a boyfriend, and he has no problem saying yes as she gets progressively more drunk. Maybe I can tell that song, "no means no", and I won't have to hear it again...
Mask Of Prospero - Hiraeth
This record is an interesting case to illustrate that dynamics can be taken too far. For as much as I sometimes prattle on about records that are too loud for too long, we have to also consider the opposite side of the spectrum, where a record ebbs and flows too much, leaving us unable to predict the tides. That's the feeling I got from Mask Of Prospero's new record, which has moments of metalcore fury interlaced with moments of nearly ambient quiet. Taking the loud/soft dynamic to the max is interesting in theory, but not so much in practice.
The type of ambience on this record is the kind that uses washes of soft noise, not quietly beautiful melody. Those sections are a drag on the songs, because they can't even keep the momentum from slowing gently. It's an immediate crash every time the heaviness drops out, and the soft sections don't have enough engaging content to them to keep me interested. The thing that made metalcore so popular was the blend of heaviness and sing-along melodies. This brand of metalcore doesn't have that key element. It plays with both sides, because that's the formula, but neither offers up much of a hook. This is prime 'in one ear and out the other' music. But it does prove dynamics are only important if those elements are all engaging, so at least that makes it a learning experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment