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My discovery of this band
came at the Soundwave Festival in Sydney in February 2013, a chance discovery on
an outer stage. The raw energy and enthusiasm of this band was not only
completely refreshing, it brought me back to a genre of music that I hadn't
really thought of in a very long time. I had listened to punk bands and hardcore
bands in my youth, stuff like The Clash, Dead Kennedys and Misfits to name a
few, but I hadn't sought out any new material in this genre for years.
When I first got this album and listened to it, it took me awhile to come to terms with it. The main reason for that was... well... it's not just a punk album, or a hardcore album. It's an eclectic mix of a whole range of things that, if taken singularly one at a time, makes for a very surreal and unusual experience. I mean seriously, what is with the freaked out, 60's flower power keyboard driven 'instrumental' "Golden Seal"? How do you come to terms with that following up a gangbusters start like "Son the Father" and "Magic Word"? Well, the truth is, once you have played this album about twenty times, it starts to blend into the landscape of the album, and you become much more used to it that if you just plucked that song out and played it on random on your iPod.
What gets me most about this album is that, apart from Pink Eyes unique vocal capacity, these guys are much closer to being an experimental band from the 1960's with a modern twist than a true punk or hardcore band. Take the vocals out of "No Epiphany" and you could easily mistake this for a hippy fest on a long freeform experimentation quest. And if that is what passes in this day and age for punk or hardcore then I am a very poor judge. But again, once you have listened to this album on a number of occasions, you cannot really just review it on a song-by-song basis, because as an album complete I think it works. Don't get me wrong, it is the true punk/hardcore songs on here that I like the most, when they just let themselves go, and you can imagine themselves jumping around the stage as they play.
So what is it about this that draws me to it? Perhaps the fact that it isn't what I expected when I first bought it. That at moments when it feels as though it might be drifting away from, rebounds back with a vengeance, like on "Twice Born". Maybe because it isn't just a high intensity, fully blown hardcore album that takes itself too seriously. Or perhaps it is something else that I can't place.
Look, am I going to be jumping out of my skin to grab this CD off the shelf and throw it on my stereo? Probably not. When it comes to listing my favourite albums of all time, is it one that will pop into my mind as a contender? Not likely. Neither of those things can deny the fact that this band has got something that draws me to them, and that this album, while flawed in some aspects on a song-by-song basis, as a package is a creeper.
When I first got this album and listened to it, it took me awhile to come to terms with it. The main reason for that was... well... it's not just a punk album, or a hardcore album. It's an eclectic mix of a whole range of things that, if taken singularly one at a time, makes for a very surreal and unusual experience. I mean seriously, what is with the freaked out, 60's flower power keyboard driven 'instrumental' "Golden Seal"? How do you come to terms with that following up a gangbusters start like "Son the Father" and "Magic Word"? Well, the truth is, once you have played this album about twenty times, it starts to blend into the landscape of the album, and you become much more used to it that if you just plucked that song out and played it on random on your iPod.
What gets me most about this album is that, apart from Pink Eyes unique vocal capacity, these guys are much closer to being an experimental band from the 1960's with a modern twist than a true punk or hardcore band. Take the vocals out of "No Epiphany" and you could easily mistake this for a hippy fest on a long freeform experimentation quest. And if that is what passes in this day and age for punk or hardcore then I am a very poor judge. But again, once you have listened to this album on a number of occasions, you cannot really just review it on a song-by-song basis, because as an album complete I think it works. Don't get me wrong, it is the true punk/hardcore songs on here that I like the most, when they just let themselves go, and you can imagine themselves jumping around the stage as they play.
So what is it about this that draws me to it? Perhaps the fact that it isn't what I expected when I first bought it. That at moments when it feels as though it might be drifting away from, rebounds back with a vengeance, like on "Twice Born". Maybe because it isn't just a high intensity, fully blown hardcore album that takes itself too seriously. Or perhaps it is something else that I can't place.
Look, am I going to be jumping out of my skin to grab this CD off the shelf and throw it on my stereo? Probably not. When it comes to listing my favourite albums of all time, is it one that will pop into my mind as a contender? Not likely. Neither of those things can deny the fact that this band has got something that draws me to them, and that this album, while flawed in some aspects on a song-by-song basis, as a package is a creeper.
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