domvan

I find it incredibly fitting that, while recording an album full of heretofore foreign synthesizers and vocoders, going on about the rapidly changing world, the inhuman ability of digital perfection, the rapid distance being drawn between people in increasingly connected worlds, Neil chose to rework Mr. Soul, a song he wrote in about 5 minutes in 1968 about feeling changed by fame, struck by success, unsure of the disconnect that exists between the Known Self of the Public Eye and who you know yourself to be. That distance never quite shakes you, even after all the change and progress. It’s always a cold wind that catches you through your jacket. Is it strange you should change?

This album is… More

Shut up about the garbage disposal vocals, let’s ask the real questions: what if a tech death band actually remembered to write riffs? What if a drummer could find a groove in any feel? What if an album of long, meandering songs only got better as it progressed? What if the gutturals are actually cool, huh? At least that way you definitely can’t catch the lyrics. I love precisely two tech death records and this is most definitely one of them.

To think if this had been their first release. As the story goes, it sat dormant, rough copies spreading until a proper release in ‘09. By the time we got My Love, the band had moved onto the broader conceptual horizons that would make up most of their body of work, but this is the band at their most Clear and Focused. This is a band that fuckin’ plays the shit out of some songs, the same feeling they revived with The Pleaser (an album which would also include the s/t’s boisterous, pure classic rock closing track). I would never describe it as simple, though, and much less concise. Spiers’ haunting growl here is mildly cavernous as opposed… More

The sonic equivalent to a specific kind of road trip one takes in their 20s: starts off strong, laughs, joy, everyone’s a little too boisterous, as the trip continues, the fun gets more bleak, the drinks start to choke back with less ease, the sweat begins to build. You feel sticky, tired, angry, sad, nothing. As the long drive home finally starts, none of you wanna talk about the trip ever again, some of you may no longer be friends, and yet this die is cast, you’re set on this new path for the rest of your life. And then you gotta wake up and go to work the next day. That’s life!