Review Summary: Stay afloat.
Ambition and success usually don’t correlate with each other. Sure, when a band or an artist decides to release an ambitious album it can succeed wildly, yet it can also fail due to excess of experimentation or uncharacteristic stylistic changes. With Dikembe’s newest release,
Hail Something, it would be a mistake to say this record is devoid of any ambition at all, yet the ambition leads them to something that is far from revolutionary.
Hail Something can be best categorized as an enthusiastic leap back into the warm, stagnant kiddy pool genre of emo, something safe and comforting yet energetic and earnest.
Looking back at Dikembe’s previous releases, one could say there is an obvious change to the band’s overall sound. No longer are there the witty Freaks and Geeks samples found on their classic EP,
Chicago Bowls, and there are no attempts to make this album seem like it is thematically bigger than it really is (aka
Mediumship).
Hail Something is honest in this way, as it is simply 11 short, punk-influenced gritty tracks without any surprises or musical accessories. Lead single, ‘Just Explode’, displays Dikembe’s punkier sound at its best, as it features a simple guitar riff, an explosive, punchy rhythmic section, and catchy, emotive vocals, all in the short time span of 2 minutes. Other tracks such as ‘Earth Around Me’ and ‘Awful Machine’ stray a bit from this simplistic format, but just slightly so that the album stays cohesive yet interesting. The latter track features a riff very similar to the aforementioned lead single, yet the utilization of dynamics separates itself enough from the stationary single. The former track is one of the few tracks that takes time to build upon itself, resulting in an outstanding breakdown that features one of the catchiest bass riffs of the band’s discography. Dikembe’s tweak in sound is not an amateur one and it is evident as every song on the record is solid as far as modern punk-emo goes.
This change of sound isn’t exactly new to Dikembe, as with each release they seem to try to redefine their sound. Unfortunately, this has caused them to fade away into the overpopulated kiddie pool of emo, where for only a brief moment they were able to emerge enough from the water to be noticed. With
Hail Something, much like the band themselves, some tracks seem to blend together with their neighbors too much, resulting in some unmemorable moments. There isn’t necessarily a poor track on this album, as all the tracks are very cohesive and rarely jump in quality, it’s just that if a track isn’t able to stick out enough the listener has no reason to ever return to it. This might also be telling of Dikembe as a band, because if they are unable to truly break free of the restrictive genre of emo they could very easily end their careers stuck in that same pool, better than average yet forgotten.
