After the Fall - You Don't Have to Sleep to Dream

Note: Album art by Katie Martin

After the Fall is a band defined by unbridled enthusiasm and immense energy. I had the pleasure of seeing the band live in 2007, around the time they released their first album, and the vocalist’s stage movements can best be described as those of a young man who looks like he is trying to escape from machine gun nests firing at him from all angles. This CD, the band's second album, reflects as much, as it begins with the intensity of a coked-up whirling dervish and never relents. After the Fall is not the most instrumentally precise of bands on this album, nor are they the most intellectual when it comes to lyrical content. The production is middling, the guitars are unorganized, gainy, and messy, and many of the songs are lacking when it comes to good flow. The lyrics deal mostly with relationships and have a very strong high school vibe to them. The album is undeniably formulaic and trendy, and sounds as if it is coming from the minds of people who were rich and popular. “Beautiful Assassin” and the closer, “Smile,” are downright cheesy, relying on clichés and, in the latter case, referencing lyrics from earlier tracks on the CD, which is something that a reviewer is basically required to dock for. The album relates more to teenage girls than say, thirty year old men, which I guess is a wise marketing decision, and the many great hooks on You Don‘t Have to Sleep to Dream will only aid in that marketing. The album will be out in January 2010 and I'm certain it will be accompanied by a very well-attended release party. Even if you do not favor the pre-release tracks, I would recommend going to that show because After the Fall's live act is excellent.

There are a myriad of influences at work on the band's new CD, ranging from the casual alternative of Alien Ant Farm to the pop punk of Brand New and Saves the Day to the metal of Rise Against and Killswitch Engage. But the sound is unified by the band’s ever-present exuberance, from the extremely dynamic and lively vocal style to the many fast riffs to the dramatic drum fills before the incredibly fucking epic ending to every song. Due to their similar constructions, many of the tracks end up blending together and becoming impossible to differentiate between by the third or fourth listen. “Safe Enough” and “TINTEOTW” do have some interesting harmonies, however. My favorite song on the album ended up being a two minute freeform piece, “Never Say Never Again,” which starts out with sensitive production tricks and eventually grows into a loud, climactic wall of guitars, and to my ear was a better example of the formula used by the band on most of the rest of the album. Fans of today’s radio, with its prevalent intense vocals and energetic, light-hearted, inspiring instrumentation will enjoy this album immensely. However, the depressed souls into the more lumbering and casual grunge acts and darker metal styles dominant in yesteryear will find this no better than the pop punk they so despise.

RATING: 3 OUT OF 5 STARS

Echobliss - Shed My Skin

Shed My Skin is a CD that shows its talented creators, Echobliss, are willing to conform musically to achieve the big time. It is an extremely standardized CD perfect for sending to labels and A&R professionals. Not a single song deviates from the verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus/altered format, and none of them have any sort of edgy or controversial content (though the disc does have a lot of attitude from the performance aspect). Everything has an extremely catchy hook, whether or not you actually like said hook. Every track is between three and four and a half minutes long. Shed My Skin is an extremely safe and PC EP that could cut a wide marketing swath.

The CD opens with an excellent driving riff reminiscent of the best work of post-grunge bands like Godsmack and Hinder, but the vocals morph the opening song, “Back,” into more of a glam, 1980s pop-metal creature. This description fits each of the four faster songs on the record, and the two elements are largely in conflict, inhibiting the quality of the record. While all members display prodigious talent at various points on the EP (every instrument has solos), the vocalist’s uncanny ability to channel Sebastian Bach makes the dark lyrics that dominate the disc seem almost happy and the overall thrust of the record becomes disingenuous when combined with the driving but peppy instrumentation. In shorter words, it seems like the record is trying to be depressing and daunting, but is simply unable to as the performance brims with unbridled optimism. This is great for a live show (which I can verify because I have seen this band live and they are wonderful), but for the more intellectual pursuit of the EP, not so much. The faster-paced tracks, “Back,” “Shed My Skin,” “Angry Now,” and “Let Me In,” which were my favorites and are the most memorable songs to me, have great mainstream hit potential, but probably won’t impress the musical intelligentsia at SPIN, Revolver, and Rolling Stone. I doubt the band cares. More power to them.

The two remaining tracks do provide some variety while the band slows the tempo a bit. “Way Down” is a power ballad straight out of the 1980s and seems to be trying very hard to get airplay during one of those end-of-episode montages on TV’s Scrubs. “The Well” is more interesting musically, as the band does their best impersonation of Tool, resulting in a track different from any other on the CD (but similar to those on many other CDs).

Shed My Skin is the product of an extremely talented band but is extremely mainstream and sometimes given to clichéd hooks and uncannily familiar vocal and instrumental styles. If you are a fan of eighties metal or the happier shades of post-grunge, you will probably love the CD. If not, it will seem merely average.

RATING: 3 OUT OF 5 STARS

Pearl Jam - Binaural

Binaural is a schizophrenic disc with a few masterworks and all kinds of suckage. The album is best remembered for two tracks that are featured on Pearl Jam’s greatest hits record, Rearviewmirror. “Light Years” and “Nothing as it Seems” are both haunting and heartfelt odes fully deserving of their stalwart reputation. The latter is, in my mind, one of the very best examples I’ve ever heard of the benefit of production to mood. There are other, lesser standouts on the album too. “Insignificance” and its dirtier, grittier little brother “Grievance” are extremely passionate, relatable, and inspiring. Two other tracks, “Thin Air” and “Rival” do not attain greatness, but are quite interesting pieces, containing odd rhythms, chords, and ambiance (though “Rival” can be criticized as gimmicky and lacking in subtlety, as “Deep” was on Ten and “Leash” was on Vs). But there are several tracks on Binaural that are just god-awful. And it starts right away. The first three songs on the record, taken together, comprise a sonic definition of the word “clusterfuck.” All three are marred by incomprehensible, badly mixed guitar lines and overcrowded production, and remind me not of one of the most talented bands of my generation, but of the shittiest of the shitty punk bands in my hometown. To describe the trio in the critical cliché of smug word plays, “Breakerfall” goes splat, “God’s Dice” comes up snake-eyes, and “Evacuation” is downright diuretic. Pearl Jam seems to be enamored by experimenting with punk styles on this album, which is of course their musical right. But as a punk band, Pearl Jam is below average if this CD is any indication.

But as I said, there are all kinds of suckage on this album. Not only do you have fast-paced, incoherent, overcrowded messes. There are also the slow, boring, and pointless tracks on the second half of the album. “Of the Girl” sounds like a butchered cover of a sixties flower-power band, “Sleight of Hand” is a piss-poor impersonation of Tool with no flow, and “Parting Ways” is a lazy composition with a stolen intro, a shitty breakdown, and a broken tape hidden four minutes after the track just to waste the listener’s time. It’s as if the tape is put there by the band to tell the listener that yes, they realize the album sucks, and it represents a creative regression by the band. Perhaps the breaking tape and the shitty punk songs and the stupid slow songs with no flow are meant to illustrate a frazzled psyche that cannot fit the pieces of reality together anymore. That would be a really good and appropriate allegory to excuse the album, which is for the most part a dissonant mess of ill-conceived experimentation. But Pearl Jam illustrated the same fractured psyche a hell of a lot more pleasantly on their little-known and somewhat more mainstream debut called Ten. Tracks four through seven save Binaural from being a total loss, but a band with the talent level of Pearl Jam should not be excused for surrounding a few good tracks with a bunch of filth like most other bands do. Just hold on to Rearviewmirror for the two best songs and save your money.

RATING: 2 OUT OF 5 STARS

Flight Metaphor - Trapdoors and Ladders

Flight Metaphor’s debut album Trapdoors and Ladders is about the ups and downs of life, but there isn’t much dynamism in their songwriting. Upon completion, I felt like I had listened to thirteen takes of the same song with slightly different intros. It’s an album that’s not unpleasant, but not hard to fall asleep to. I guess, if I had to pick the two best-quality examples of the Flight Metaphor sound, they would be “In Our Bones” and the titular closing track. These tracks contain very thoughtful and relatable lyrics and well-crafted arrangements which make the songs feel more epic than they actually are. When I’d heard them, I felt like I’d just read a book for young adults. Clearly, that’s what this band was going for. They depend completely on your ability to relate to their lyrics and wistful mood. And if you are a devout Christian in a suicidal exhaustion of loneliness and recreational drug abuse, well this album is for you.

The band's influences include eighties new wave and nineties alternative, and that guise dominates the playing time. But every once in a while, Flight Metaphor throws in a little musical wrinkle. In “Flat on your Face,” interesting repeated single wah notes change things up. In “I-29,” there is the one and only example on this CD of what I would call a guitar solo. Every song has little drum rolls here and there to feign power. And just to flout your expectations, they clandestinely swipe the melody from “The Breakup Song” by Greg Kihn in “Bird Flying Red.” These guys don’t care about impressing you. They are all about subtlety. Everything is about a mood. There is a distinctive blend of guitar tones, starting right from the opening notes, that is at once woeful and nostalgic, and never goes away through the thirteen tracks of the album. I would call it the defining sound of the CD. It gives off the artistic aura of the Charlie Kaufman character in the movie Adaptation, who says, “I just want to write about flowers.” This album is only trying to be good, not great.

The singer, Mike Harvat, is very adept at emotional intonation and displays a great amount of talent on Trapdoors and Ladders. One obvious influence for the vocalist is The Cure. Another is Radiohead. The Flight Metaphor vocalist can be positively compared to both singers. That should play extremely well in Omaha, where a vocalist is instantly considered a genius if he sounds anything like The Cure. Combining Harvat’s talents with his knack for relatable, sentimental lyrics, the band’s woeful guitar tone, and the somewhat peppier, punk rhythms that occasionally show up on the album, Flight Metaphor shows itself capable of writing a great song, one that is at once heartbreaking and inspiring, heartthrob-ish and introspective. And taken in isolation, these tracks could reasonably be described as such. But that’s just it. I just listened to a one song album with thirteen tracks.

RATING: 2.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine

By the time of their self-titled major debut, rap rock gods Rage Against the Machine had already established several tenets of their musical sound. For one, the band’s standard song structure is evident on this CD. An intro bar establishes the basic riff, you have your two verses and choruses, then an interminably long, segmented bridge with seemingly unending tension, and finally the thing wraps with an altered chorus at ten times the volume of the rest of the song. The standardized description may sound cynical, but it is not meant to be: the formula works in spades. After all, I did refer to the band as “rap rock gods.”

Rage is at their best when they manage to create seminal, simple riffs or guitar effects with a great line or two of lyrics. They are a very hook-dependent band that does not really focus on flow, mood, or intricacy. Though their musicianship is rarely virtuosic, their best work still attains a masterful quality and is incisive, gritty, and meaningful, like their major influence Public Enemy and the best hip hop of the eighties. It speaks to the members’ skills as songwriters that out of such simplicity they can create something sublime. That is, after all, the basic point of artistic pursuit, and it serves particularly well the political themes that Rage Against the Machine is trying to convey.

The first two songs on the CD, Bombtrack and Killing in the Name, fit the mold I just described and of course became huge hits remembered by millions and played by cover bands everywhere. Know Your Enemy and Township Rebellion also follow the rubric, and are rousing tracks. Township Rebellion is especially interesting, containing idiosyncratic, dissonant eccentricities that no doubt inspired later California bands like Korn, and managing to insert a video game solo from guitarist Tom Morello that doesn‘t seem completely out of place.

However, the standard and successful formula we know and love Rage Against the Machine for is not present on all parts of the album. In fact, it could be said that this debut is the most eponymous and eclectic album by the band. That could be a positive. But for me, the deviation from the norm, whether it be a slower tempo, a virtuosic solo, or other structural change, represents a distinct downturn, and this occurs mostly in the middle of the album.

The first deviation occurs at the third track, Take the Power Back. The first half of the song is excellent. Exciting and vivid funky bass dominates the fare, and the solo is infinitely more showy and virtuosic than those in the first two tracks. However, the song becomes unfocused in its second half, delving into a dragging, episodic bridge that seems to be searching for a memorable gimmick. In fact, on this record, it seems whenever guitarist Tom Morello truly shows off, the song falls apart. Perhaps that is why on later Rage Against the Machine records, his guitar playing is more subdued.

Track four, Settle for Nothing, is the low point of the record. Seemingly gauging that the song was an interminably dull piece instrumentally (save for a ripping but completely incongruous guitar solo), vocalist Zack de la Rocha delivers the hook, which is quite a snappy lyric actually, over and over and over again, more and more passionately as he goes, trying futilely to save the track. “We’ll settle for nothing now, and we’ll settle for nothing later,” he yells, ironically mirroring my opinion of the song. But while it is obvious from the beginning that de la Rocha is a compelling and precise lyricist, when all of your lyrics deal with very similar topics as his do, no amount of clever phrasing will save a song that completely fails to capture the interest of the listener from an instrumental standpoint. Again, the seminal riff is key to the success of a Rage Against the Machine song.

The boredom continues for much of the fifth track, Bullet in the Head, until the song is redeemed somewhat by its forceful, grooving ending. I found myself thinking that the song would have been benefited by simply cutting the first two thirds of the song and working from the end. Finally, the disc recovers with the driving Know Your Enemy. From then on, the record is basically acceptable. Wake Up and Fistful of Steel are middling, but the closer, Freedom, like many enders, goes for the jugular. Freedom has many great moments, but to me the track is an episodic series of hooks (including the one from Township Rebellion) rather than a single cohesive song, and as such the record fails to end with a standout.

Though some of its tracks are choppy hodgepodges of incongruous hooks, solos, and breakdowns, Rage Against the Machine’s debut record is, in general, an exciting mix of rap rock that does both the rap and the rock genre justice. The record was able to provide three bonafide hits, all of which are rightfully revered for setting the gold standard of the burgeoning musical niche the band was inhabiting. The CD conveys a passionate performance, the exuberance of which filters through the production, and it displays for us the prodigious talents of each band member. So while the record isn’t perfect, it is still recommended for anyone who enjoys driving, heavy grooves and thought provoking beats.

RATING: 3.5 STARS OUT OF 5