Dope
Blood Money, Pt. 1

Release Date: 2016 | Tracklist

When it comes to third-rate acts of any fad, shamelessness is usually a virtue. It comes with a healthy dose of self-awareness, freeing the band up from pretentious posturing that they’re anything more than harmless entertainment. Dope’s exhibited that sort of humility, for better or for worse. The positives involve them putting on a good live show without any delusions of grandeur, even when put earlier in the time slots than an irrelevant local opener act. The main negative is the absolute lack of a musical identity and chameleon-like stylistic hops to the flavour of the day. What people refer to as their trademark sound only blossomed on their second album when they hopped onto the nu metal bandwagon. It’s been messed with since, with the most successful departures taking place on No Regrets.

The least successful departure was unleashed onto the public in 2014 in the form of a feeble single that blended uninspired chromatic riffs with a horribly misfit, low-tuned breakdown. Dope was trying to adapt to the times and failing. It seemed they realised the error of their ways a year later, as a reunion of something labelled a classic line-up took place. This fit pretty well with the trend at the time, and the nostalgia wave was a more sensible fad for them to ride. The natural course of action involved aborting the batch of material featuring “Selfish” and starting fresh, given the fact that the only constant between the two line-ups has been the frontman. For some unfathomable reason, the material was kept. This is the bad side of shamelessness manifesting as hard as humanly possible, as the reunion line-up is stuck chugging away at a horribly misguided attempt at staying relevant.

Something that should speak volumes of Blood Money’s quality is that “Selfish” (the aforementioned 2014 single) could be considered one of the standouts. The best thing on here is a cover of Hole’s “Violet”, with the band having a hell of a time and Edsel Dope ending somewhere between late-era Jaz Coleman and Brent Oberlin. The fact that the greatest track on a non-cover album is a cover should be worrisome enough. In terms of original material, there are two pretty good songs on here – “Blood Money” lives out the band’s breakdown fantasy with the most inspired bunch of riffing on the whole album, and the awkward structural reprising involving a fearful-sounding voice sample doesn’t really annoy as hard as it could because everything is so fist-thumping catchy. “Shoulda Known Better” seems like it should fail on paper, as you get a distinct Killing Joke vibe with low-tuned guitars and some traces of the old Dope sound, but it defies all odds and actually ends up quite pleasurable. And that’s pretty much it. “Selfish” dukes it out with “1999” for next best on the record, with neither being particularly convincing. The former is dragged down by its insipid guitar work and lyrics that are inane even by Dope’s low standards, the combination sounding like shoddy rehearsal noodling, whilst the latter drowns the potential of its chorus in a monotone, whammy frenzy breakdown from hell.

Everything else on here ranges from pedestrian to downright unbearable. “Lexapro” is a laughable sombre piano segue, leading into the unsolicited metalcore worship of “Hold On”. The presence of that song on the disc is baffling, as by now metalcore is closer to needing a revival of its own than anything else. Not particularly good dubstep electronics hijack “End of the World” as a clap track ekes them on in the background. The song’s bridge is actually pretty good, as the real instruments duke it out with the electronic processing in a cool section with little regard for regular timing, but it sticks out from the simplistic core like a sore thumb. “Numb” is by far the most misguided of the bunch, as Edsel auto-tunes his way to kitsch hell through a tired string ostinato and woefully mismatched electronic drums. Plus, the title coincidence with a bigger act that rode similar coattails to Dope in the first place can’t actually be a coincidence.

In the album’s defence, it seems to have been made with a great deal of attention and care in spite of how ridiculous the premise is. The arrangements are quite detailed, with great interplay between all the instruments and a subtle layer of harmonising or additional melody cropping up at just the right time. The whammy leads, when used sparingly (think “Blood Money” and not “1999”), are actually a great stylistic complement to the chosen approach. Everybody sounds quite into it, seemingly catching Edsel’s enthusiasm for the material. Maybe this is why they kept it? One way or the other, no matter how many sprinkles you put on a tired riff (“Drug Music”) or lazy auto-tuned vocal melody (“Razorblade Butterfly”) that should never have been recorded in the first place, you won’t make them good. Blood Money may well be sincere, but that doesn’t make it any less uninspired, misguided and tiresome. And this is only part one, apparently. I’m not looking forward to the sequel.

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