BREAKING NEWS: young journalist wannabe exudes limp-assed "professionalism" on 3 year old album

This is pretty out of the norm for my lovably zZaAnNyY writing antics, but I've been doing little reviews on rateyourmusic.com, lately, mostly just to dick around and get my head Back In The Game™. I'm preeeetttyyy positive that no one needs a new assessment of an album that came out 3 years ago that was covered by all mainstream alternative music journals, but that's the fun of not giving a shit and doing things for the sake of doing them - SMASHIN THE CAPITALIST AGENDA, imo. Anyway, here's this dull, fairly reserved shit: 

I already did a little backstory thing for the Ivy Tripp review, but basically, I was a ridiculously huge fan of Katie's output from 2008 to 2013. I got the p.s. eliot demo off a blog randomly and never turned back, eating up their whole discography, as well as Bad Banana, the King Everything tapes, Waxahatchee's split w/ Chris Clavin, American Weekend, and even cried like a wimp at p.s. eliot's last show.

Needless to say, I was pretty forthy in the jaw when the announcement for this album came about, and then - subsequently - in denial about how little I liked it for about a year. I've since concluded that some albums are growers and some are just sort of impossible, and this falls somewhere in the middle (though definitely leaning more towards the latter). 

On this album, Katie chose to abandon the ultra lo-fi bedroom sound of her earlier solo works, so the majority of tracks are augmented by a couple musician friends, and presented with crystal clear production. That said, the focus still remains squarely on the bare songwriting itself, so the accompanying musicians never act as much more than stagehands for her performance. What this unfortunately translates into is a handful of otherwise decent songs turning to complete slogs due to to a bunch of clumpy, meandering studio takes. Seriously, Kyle McBride and Keith Spencer sound like fucking automatons fulfilling a programmed function more than members of a band, here. There's just no sense of chemistry or that they're even playing in the same state, let alone the same studio. Just sterile plodding that not only provides no energy, but stymies all existing energy.

If anything, though, it's the songwriting that fails to grab me. I dunno if this is due to Katie obviously reaching into new reference pools for her sound or what, but almost none of these tracks have an emotional core that I connect with. While "Blue Pt. II", "Tangled Envisioning", and "You're Damaged" are all pretty and likable, only the minimal bass-driven "Brother Bryan" and the incredibly poignant "Lively" crush my heart the way her old stuff used to. The rest alternates between sounding like weird, unfinished experiments or... just plain boring 90's grab bag alternative music. 

I get that musicians get sick of doing the same old shit, and change their sound as their tastes shift and they age, but really, the shift out of the familiar twee pop/pop punk/loner acoustica realm just doesn't do it for me. The songwriting - minus the tacked on accompaniments - is pretty scattershot, the production and back up tracks are bleach-tier sterile, and the lyrics just don't hit home in that bookish, broken hearted way that all her old projects used to boast. I think I'll continue to revisit this every 4-6 months for the conceivable future, but this is still one of the biggest letdowns I can think of. 

Like, in a musical sense. My life hasn't been that good.

xBREAKDOWNZx 4 a tender heart

So Portland Round 2 has been going pretty well, to say the least. I mean, plunging my eager fingers into the soil of true Purpose And Fulfillment™ has remained elusive, but still, I feel like I'm growing up at a respectable pace in lieu of getting the fuck out of ~crust_punk_lyf~. Like, hey, I have a job now! It's a dishwashing gig, which is a monstrous step down from being a farm faery, but because this is Portland, it somehow pays more than any job I have ever had. In other words, Portland is far, far too expensive. But in these tumultuous post-long term relationship times, it's the SLAMZ that have provided me the most solace. So today, let's skip down the cobblestone pathway of history for some of the sickest pit riffage there ever was, and hopefully, you'll feel the FKN MOSH like a cool towel on your feverish brow as well.

Well, this was supposed to be "Seeds Of Suffering" or "Breeding The Spawn", but apparently you can't embed SHIT anymore 'cause of new-ish youtube/google policies. This is still pretty solid, though, so whatever. Suffocation and I go way back to 2003 - right when they reformed and stopped putting out good music. Regardless, I proudly donned one of their embarrassing longsleeve shirts for years - with the Dan Seagrave art above, no less. You know the ones: they're all cottony and plastered with stupid shit on every conceivable surface, including the band's logo like 8 times on one sleeve. Kind of a graphic design quagmire, but hey, you have to admire how well they function on a eugenics level. Anyway, Suffocation are known for being pioneers of "brutal death metal", a genre so stupidly named I feel like I'm getting whiplash from all the times I uncritically spoke that title in front of normal people. I feel like that genre's parameters are sort of varied, but generally function along the same evolutionary lines as punk to hardcore punk - basically the XTREME augmentation of all attributes. Most notably, though, Suffocation threw in breakdowns more derived from bro-mosh hardcore than "Raining Blood". It's pretty funny to listen to the accounts of scene elders, as most of them seem to remember these guys being widely derided in their heyday. Considering how untouchable and groundbreaking they're considered nowadays. I feel like this can be chalked up to metalheads being the same strain of traditionalist luddite that occupy your local Bruderhof village.

Dying Fetus are great, as they're not only a band that elistist Mtn. Dew cicerones loathe for 'ruining metal integrity', but also remind me of being a complete dipshit and trying to defend their ridiculous name to my mother when I was like 16. They're pretty notable for kicking off the "Suffo-clone" trend, which basically amounted to white dudes in baseball caps trying their hardest to mimic Suffocation, but lacking the instrumental prowess necessary. You know what's easier than writing songs with complex time changes and "blazing" guitar interplay? CHROMATIC BREAKDOWNZ. I mean, listen to how fucking dopey this song is: that fucking bouncy-ass breakdown around the 1:15 mark... the attempts to be "technical" by throwing in little wanky harmonic bits amongst all the strutting pit riffs... that DEFINITELY stolen riff near the beginning! I completely non-ironically love this song, and it's helped me 'pick up the change' numerous times in the past week, usually while cooking. And again, because of blogspot, you'll have to deal with this muddy live version instead of the Bathe In Entrails one, but it's kinda sweet anyway. Look at the bouncer in the front row; my personal narrative for him involves daydreaming about a job that doesn't involve socially inept longhairs with low hygienic priorities, nor the bolts of sweat flagellating him from behind.

No Zodiac are kinda special, as they're not only incredibly silly in a deadpan way, but one of the only metallic beatdown bands I can think of that went "full metal" without becoming some nerd pandering bullshit. For clarification, look at Job For A Cowboy, Annotations Of An Autopsy, or The Black Dahlia Murder. All of those bands' 'growing pains' essentially translated to capitulating to people who edit Metal Archives, alienating the entirety of their teenage fanbases as a result. Honestly I can't even tell what the fuck song this is because the quality is so cellphone-y, but no big deal - the TRANSGRESSIVE NIHILISM IS UPON U LOL. I literally experienced several dreams of seeing these guys play when I was in their hometown last summer. I'm not sure if it was rooted in deep seated regret for not snatching up one of their be-logo'd ski masks or what, but in retrospect, I feel the karate mosh would have been substantial. If you want a comprehensible example of this band to go on, check out the video for "Chaos Reigns" on youtube. It's great, they kidnap a bunch of people and set them on fire for vague, "Satanic" reasons.

This could've been a much longer post, but as you can see above, blogspot is not making this a simple endeavor. I wouldn't typically resort to posting a video of some sixteen year old doing a play-along on guitar, but I'm a little too deep into this now to jump ship. To be honest, my interest in the band waned pretty massively in the past few years. Somewhere along the hallowed path of their stylistic evolution - from humble Infest-worship beginnings to heavy-as-shit NYHC standards - they decided to hop the trend barge and put out Blinded, a fairly dull Entombed-via-Nails midrange sanctuary. I spent a decent chunk of my teenage years listening to and burning out on that 'classic swedish death metal sound', so to hear a hardcore band appropriate it from another hardcore band sorta dashed my enthusiasm for HW. I haven't heard their last LP, Rust, admittedly, but Isolation is great
pit "riff clinic" (bleah), and the adorable Jack-O-Lantern shirt I got at their Halloween show in 2010 ('11?) made up for getting elbowed in the throat, even.

In conclusion, I finished this at 1:30 AM, published it, and woke up in horror when I re-read the trainwreck I unleashed upon the zero remaining readers. Also, do you remember when H-Dubz's vocalist didn't have any tattoos? Should I cut part of my face off an eat it for referring to Harms Way as "H-Dubz"? COMMENT BELOW