Review Summary: a comeback no one asked for, an album no one wanted
My Uncle Bill was a musician. I never really liked him, although when I was young I used to find him somewhat entertaining. Even at the time I knew the music he made was unsophisticated, but it was also lively and profane; just the things to hold a young man's musical attention. He would play this hybrid of rap and rock music, which was very much the in-thing at the time. Looking back now, I just remember him as being incredibly annoying. He was a sort of Bert character (á la Mary Poppins); cymbals between his knees, kickdrum on his back, absurdly modern guitar clasped in his weathered hands. He always put genuine effort into his visits too, putting on performances even though he was never asked to. We'd always try to tell him, try to slip innocuously into conversation how his music was like bile eating away at our souls, but he’d look at us with such wide-eyed enthusiasm it always left us feeling like we were being ungrateful. So this continued, but thankfully not for much too much longer.
He wrote his own songs too, which he took great pride in. Well, 'wrote' is perhaps too strong a word- he cobbled together chords, beats and basslines until it sounded like something vaguely resembling music. Then, he'd try to maintain extra relevancy by covering lyrical themes commonly associated with the genre; sex, drugs, violence etc. On one particular occasion, we were all sat in the lounge, listening to Bill play his new song. It was dire, that goes without saying, but it was dire in a profound way. The riff was a hook stolen from an infinitely more famous band, the lyrics a sort of sugary-sweet sissy pop track. It was more car crash-esque than an actual car crash. But, it was also irritatingly infectious. It later turned out that the song became a little more popular than anyone expected. To this day it is still a playlist mainstay at strip clubs and sleazy bars (or so I'm told). That was more success than Bill ever deserved, but it wasn't bad form for a man who knew precisely nothing about music production.
Bill went off the radar for some time after that. I can’t say we missed him really- he was more of a liability than he was worth; a perpetual musical disappointment. We never eagerly awaited his visits and we certainly weren't anticipating his return. I grew up, moved out of the family home. Then, after some years, he shows up on my doorstep, that same overeager look on his face. The second I open the door to greet him, he bounds in, tears through my house, jumps onto my sofa and screams,
"This goes out to my favorite band, The Refused!!!"
before launching into the most diabolically poor cover of New Noise I have ever heard. I don't know if this was a desperate effort to gain some credibility or just a thoroughly presumptuous attempt at paying homage to an infinitely better band, but regardless, the car crash had become a freeway pileup. He sodomized the song in front of me. Skewered all the instrumentals, took every bit of meaning out of the lyrics. It was nightmarish; a definitive refutation of the existence of a god. I’m ashamed to say, the rage overtook me- I kicked him out of the house, and he landed in a puddle outside with an enormous crash and an atonal chord chug. I simply couldn’t take it anymore. When I was younger, things were simpler- I could endure all manner of sounds, especially if they were energetic. Now, I could no longer put up with the ruckus, and had no desire to. The sound physically hurt me.
I think Bill got the message, because he disappeared for another 10 years. I graduated college, got married and managed to get myself a respectable job. Even though every play of New Noise felt like nails scraping against my soul as I remembered what he did to it, I'd all but forgotten about my uncle. Not too long ago, though, on an especially beautiful Saturday, there came a knock at the door. I recognized the knock instantly; uncle Bill’s knock. Simultaneously knocking with both fists, both feet and his face, cymbals crashing and drums thrumming in the background. The racket was unmistakable. I approached the front door with dread, and Bill grinned at me through the frosted glass. I latched the chain, inhaled deeply, and opened the door. There he stood- same clothes, same hair, same one-man-band apparatus, same uncle I remembered. Only now with the oh-so modern addition of a snapback. He pushed his head as far as possible through the crack in the door, stretching his smile so wide he was more teeth than man.
“I’ve written some new songs”, he says.
“I don't care," I reply.
Uncle Bill's smile doesn’t wane for an instant.
“Want to hear?”
“Nope.”
He either didn’t hear me or didn’t listen, because just like that he unstuck his head from the gap, and took a step back for extra thrashing-about room. Then, he launched into his new material. This is where it gets a little difficult for me, as I really have no desire to insult my fruit-loop, dickhead uncle.
But it was utterly vile. Something only a subhuman could conceive.
Every note, every lyric, every tone was putrid. Weak, underwritten and with no nuance whatsoever. He'd somehow even incorporated the noise from when I shoved him into the puddle as a breakdown. It was a sign of things to come when, at 7 minutes into the torturous 50-minute performance, uncle Bill started roaring,
“we got our middle fingers up, you know that we don’t give a ***….”
In some ways, it was okay seeing my Uncle again. He reminded me of a simpler time, when music to my young ears was based purely on what sounded appealing on the surface, rather than such novelties as competent songwriting, meaningful lyrics, or a legitimate reason for existing in the first place. The problem was, I had grown up- uncle Bill hadn’t. He was the same as he had always been, having not taken on board any of the critiques he had received from all those years ago. And now he had returned, uninvited, acting like he had the right to walk back into my life, defecate in my ears and take away a bit more of my soul. There was something vaguely admirable about that- clearly he was confident in what he did. Either that or he had a worryingly high opinion of himself. But what good is pride if you have no reason to have it in the first place?
The Brimstone Sluggers is a release 16 years in the making, and a monumental achievement in the worst possible way: an album of such obscene laziness it missed the rap/rock boat by at least 10 years. Back in the day, Crazy Town built themselves up as a notably inferior Limp Bizkit clone, a band who have themselves lost their relevancy. There's decidedly more emphasis on trap/ hip-hop stylistics this time, but since this facet is still just as weak as it was the first time around, the album feels even less diverse. This style, as performed by these no-longer youthful would-be badasses feels nothing short of embarassing.
TBS was never going to be a masterpiece, but it could have quite easily found itself a home in the popularity stakes alongside a band like Hollywood Undead. As it stands, the sheer complacency found here is staggering, especially for a band who were always going to have to work extra hard to make this formula work once again.
"Piss off, uncle Bill."
