Review Summary: You’re gonna go real far with that black guitar
Imitation is a funny thing. We look down on it yet fall prey to it all the time, hence trends. We value originality, yet so many musicians try something entirely new that doesn’t work and fall flat on their face. The answer to songwriting that stands the test of time perhaps lies somewhere in the middle, but in the end, in the arena of music, execution trumps concept nine out of ten times. This record makes me muse about these things because while A Pale Horse Named Death may boast many influences, I can’t shake the uncanny feeling that I’m listening to a post-Layne Alice In Chains record, one surprisingly comparable to the seminal Black Gives Way To Blue. In fact, the blueprint of that album is followed here to a fault, from the grungy rock numbers right down to the rainy ballads.
Shallow Grave starts off on a strong note with a driving rhythm and a big ear-worm chorus, but on the next track The Needle In You, the Alice In Chains worship is so thick it’s practically staggering; the track could almost slot in between God Smack and Hate To Feel on Dirt with lyrics like ‘I am the needle in you, anti-christ before your eyes. I am the poison in you, assist in your suicide’.
This utter reverence and devotion to Alice In Chains pays off dividents on In The Sleeping Death, by far the stand-out track on this album. It’s a lyrically defeated song that simply flows like pure silk and that incredible chorus just cascades over the listener in beautiful aching waves as Sal Abruscato croons ‘with my broken heart so sad I’ve go to go away, as I lay and take my last breath in the sleeping death’. Growing Old is also so Alice it hurts: ‘Every day I grow older and older, I can see the lines on my face. One more white hair on my head, thousand mile stare in my eyes, deep in my bones’.
But the album also knows how to have fun while it’s struggling to put the needle down. Devil Came With A Smile is a very fun and decadent tune about selling your soul for rock’n’roll, and Killer By Night is more entertaining and infectious than a Guns ’N Roses groupie in the late 80’s. Dead Of Winter on the other hand is a ballad as effective as any of the tearjerkers on Black Gives Way To Blue.
A Pale Horse Named Death was very much a reaction/answer to the loss of Peter Steele, but I have next to no experience with Type O Negative so much of the inherent context of this album is lost on me. This lapse in no way affects the experience that is Lay My Soul To Waste however. This is a modern rock/grunge classic and should be listened to by all fans of Alice In Chains; In fact it might even be more worthy of your attention than that last album with the dinosaur on it… I leave you with a lyric.
We are snowflakes
Drifting to the end
Like leaves falling
Off the trees of winter
The sun goes down
And you never come around
The moon fades away
And the stars are blowing up
Like the leaves on the trees
In the winter we die
