Review Summary: Living up to the album title… a little too well.
The nu-metal genre has always been a hit and miss genre and, by 2002, it was a very very oversaturated one; for every, unique band, there would be about eight coal chamber/linkin park clones and then one other band that was interesting (to varying degrees) but fell by the wayside. And so here we are, with one of those latter bands, Switched. During their rather brief mainstream existence had one hit single, “Inside”, which pushed them into the major labels and subsequently dissipated in popularity rather quickly during the Music Sea-ne change of 2003. So, I thought “why not listen to it?” And now, here I am reviewing the band’s only major label album,
Subject To Change.
Like the album cover and title suggests,
Subject To Change is a strange looking beast, modern yet a little bit cerebral at the same, and a very, very confusing meld of polar opposites. Throughout the album there’s influences of bands such as Deftones, Type O Negative, P.O.D., Korn/Adema and even Botch (to some degree), creating a sound that is industrial-heavy, sometimes thrashy/speedy/groovy, and yet still somewhat melodic and accessible nu-metal; and extremely far removed from being stereotypically “formulaic”. The dual guitars have weird levels of interplay and varying time signatures between the two but still pull off the job of making the meld work. The guitars duel between uproaring melodic choruses and drop-A tuned nu-metal numbers at varying speeds and frequencies. This is generally hit and miss at times and doesn’t always work in the band’s favour, such as on “Skins” and “Last Chance”. In some songs, the bass is required to hold the mix together such as on “Darkening Days”; while it is smothered most of the time under the guitars, it is best used for glue during the verses when there is usually sparse use of guitars. Tying this strange mixture is Ben Schigel, whose vocals are like Korn’s Johnathan Davis, but more akin to a less whiny Mark Chavez (Adema); he is best described as the b-st-rd child of Matt Heacock (American Head Charge) and Sonny Salvadol (P.O.D.). Unlike what you’d assume he does, he isn’t a “regular” vocalist; while not perfect, he manages to adapt Walter Schriefels-esque mannerisms in being able to not make words rhyme (most of the time) but still flow with the music while he does his almost tremolo speed back-and-forth between screaming and singing vocals, while remaining confident in whichever style he chooses.
However, this confusing mixture is what ultimately gives
Subject To Change a sense of irony in the name; as much as the music changes, so does the quality. Songwriting is a major issue on the album; the completely inconsistent nature of the album and its chaotic nature/refusal to sit still in one place at a time does at times create a terrifying sense of melody but more often than not tends to trip over itself when trying to move from the verses to the choruses. This problem is especially worse in the bridges, which 10 out of 13 times on the album struggle to have a proper transition from chorus to bridge and back to chorus, such as on “10 Dead Fingers” and “Anymore”; this isn’t to say some of the bridges aren’t good however (e.g. on “Exterminate” and “Reflections”), but for the most part ruins the flows of most of the songs (especially on “Wrongside”) and are weak. The almost omnipresent nature of this problem on
Subject To Change makes the overall experience less enjoyable, especially when some songs like “Walk Away” and “Spread” are really average otherwise. This inconsistency is best reflected, however, in the vocals of Ben Schigel, who doesn't have in mind a clear identity of what he wants to be. This leads to some strange moments throughout the album, such as his attempts at scat singing on “Religion” and his odd scream sing alterations on “Four Walls”. Overall, this makes the experience quite jarring and not exactly something to sing along to; not even “Inside”, the album’s “hit” single, is easy to enjoy on first listen. The band has made themselves so complicated that things that sound accessible are, instead, not; leaving the album’s direction and targets largely unclear to the listener.
So to close this off, this album is not innately broken or poorly performed (quite the opposite); but it fails to hold itself together, and thereon becomes a bloody mutated mess on the floor rather than a powerful musical cyborg; while not awful, it is not great either.
Subject To Change is exactly what it says it is; so inconsistent and so changing that it’s a different beast from the rest of the nu metal fodder, but ultimately so rapidly changing it is unable to finish anything properly. A difficult listening experience, but not in composition or atmosphere; just in idiosyncrasy.
2.5/5
Listen to the album here: https://youtu.be/CRn8xfNRSFI
