Review Summary: The catchy and technically proficient moments on this album are few and far between; instead, what you'll get is a swampy mess of repetitive riffing and growling courtesy of the most successful Alice in Chains tribute band ever.
Godsmack. A band that... well... a band, no matter how you look at it. Opinion beyond that on the Massachusetts hard rock quartet is more divided. The Godsmack faithful, who as far as I can tell have heard no more than 4 pre-Black Album Metallica songs, defend their band on the grounds that they are enjoyable to listen to, and that just because they sound similar to other bands doesn't make them bad. After all, all art is theft, so steal from the best.
However, there are other people in this world who believe that it is possible to create work that is distinct if not totally creative. Take System of a Down, for example. You couldn't really call any given riff or melody really original, yet they sound unique and you can tell their music from most other bands when you hear it. The issue is further complicated by the concept of rehashing what you've done before. Can an artist really be called original when, like Korn, they innovate a genre of music but continue to play the same old types of songs for their whole career? So, in that respect, there are really three ways to stand out in the music world today.
1. You can create a sound that nobody has really heard before. This can work good, like with Nirvana and the Sex Pistols, but often times these artists just end up being tagged as avant-garde indie hipsters, here today and gone tomorrow.
2. You can incorporate a variety of influences or use immediately recognizable elements in your music that make your songs, if not revolutionary, at least distinct. This is sort of hard to do wrong.
3. You can progress upon your pre-existing sound so that you don't sound the same. This can be done well, like Slipknot, or badly, like Metallica, or it can be an obvious cash grab, like Papa Roach.
Faceless accomplishes none of these things. Although Godsmack would later "change" their "sound" on IV, Faceless only shows Godsmack in exactly the same place as they were on their debut. Still replaying the same old Alice in Chains/Metallica riffs, still meticulously sculpting frontman Sully Erna's voice into a near perfect combination of James Hetfield and Layne Staley, still playing songs that sound exactly like the ones they did before. There is nothing about this CD that another band has not done, and even more sickeningly, there is nothing about this CD that Godsmack has not already done. And when you consider that all they had to do to change their sound was to NOT RIP OFF SUPERIOR PREEXISTING BANDS, that's fairly pathetic.
The guitar riffs don't all sound the same on this record, if by that you mean that they can be distinguished with repeated listens. However, I found it hard to remember which song what riff was in, and there lies a songwriting problem with Godsmack. On most of their songs, the song is built around one straightforward metal sort of riff that plays, with occasional minor variations, throughout the song. This is especially prevalent toward the end of the album. "Releasing the Demons" and "Dead and Broken" hardly exist outside of their single main riff, which is not only boring but downright lazy.
Even the better songs on the CD are built around one main part, like the catchy vocal melodies on "Re-Align" or the dumb, dumb chorus lyric of "I Stand Alone." There is only occasionally any sort of attempt to integrate all the elements of a song into one seamless whole. Whenever the vocals are prominent, the music sounds weak. Whenever the music is more memorable, the vocals sound written around the riff. I was listening to an interview with these guys a while ago and they say that they usually write songs by having the musicians write the music and then sending it to the vocalist so he can write the lyrics. This total separation could not be more obvious. Very infrequently do both guitars and vocals (for this is a very guitar-driven band musically) come together to provide two satisfying elements. Either one is the focus or the other is.
The songs do not sound entirely dissimilar to each other either. Nearly all contain a heavy, drop-D tuned guitar riff consisting of only three or four chords, played in either a "brutal" way ("Make Me Believe") or a "menacing" way ("I Am"). He does solo a little, and while his solos rarely sound different from each other and they literally never fit the song especially well, they show some technical proficiency and that's part of why this got as high a rating as it did. However, the other musicians are less accomplished. The drummer rarely shows any serious talent, making him just a rhythm foundation and nothing that could have made anything sound better. To his credit, his guest spot on Stone Sour's "30-30/150" showed some decent talent. However, on this record you would never know if he's any good or not because all he does is keep a beat. He does a few fills here and there but they are all fairly basic and nothing that shows any serious skill. The bassist is just a riff machine, he isn't especially audible and even under the occasional guitar solos all he does is play long fade out notes most of the time. Or maybe that's the guitarist too, who knows. The point is that he never plays anything that the guitarist isn't playing, at least to my ear.
Now we come to Sully Erna. There is something about this man's voice in combination with the generic music playing under it that makes me hope that this band didn't exist. It usually comes out in smaller things. The song might have been playing for almost 5 minutes and I'll be staring at the counter thinking, "Please don't let it be 5 minutes, just so these guys can say that they have a 5 minute song," because when I listen to his voice I really feel like this band deserves as few accolades as possible that might distinguish them from every other hard rock/metal band out there. Basically he has this switch that he flicks his voice between. It is either "brooding melancholy disaffected aching sorrow," aka Layne Staley without the harmonies, "brutal menacing growling snarl," aka James Hetfield, or just sort of growling while singing the choruses, which is usually sort of a combination of the two. His voice is not bad but it's so boring and derivative that it doesn't engage you.
But this might have been redeemed with good lyrics, and here Godsmack shows its hand at how original it really is. Imagine, if you will, a mental picture I have concocted for your benefit. There are four bands playing poker from a deck of cards labeled MUSICAL INSPIRATION. On one side of the table is System of a Down. On either side of them are Alice in Chains and Metallica. Across from System of a Down is Godsmack.
They all draw their cards. Godsmack initially tries to draw all its cards from Alice in Chains and Metallica before taking the cards from the deck. Looking at Godsmack's hand, we see that it is the worst possible arrangement. No cards are even marginally related, either by suit or by number, that might create a legitimate hand. The bands exchange cards or whatever that's called in poker. Metallica exchanges no cards. Alice in Chains exchanges two. System exchanges one. Godsmack desperately exchanges all its cards.
"I'll wager five," says Alice in Chains. The betting goes around, with Godsmack increasing by utterly ludicrous amounts in comparison to the actual quality of the cards Godsmack is holding. However, it is unclear what Godsmack's intent is, as Godsmack is clearly too intimidated and impressed by any of the bands present to even consider making them fold. Eventually Metallica tires of this and calls an end to the betting. All lay out their cards and look expectantly at Godsmack. Trembling, Godsmack extends its cards- all the cards that Alice in Chains and Metallica put back into the deck.
I think this serves as a pretty good metaphor for Godsmack in general. Overall they sound like a bunch of B-sides from superior metal bands, and the filler tracks sound like they should have B-sides within that. B-sides of B-sides. Even the more interesting tracks, like "Serenity" or the intro to "Straight Out of Line," seem included because of something Jerry Cantrell was doing a while ago. Every single element of this CD can be traced back to either Alice in Chains or Metallica.
So why do I give this a 2 instead of a .5? Well, there are the guitar solos. But despite the total lack of artistic integrity going on, several songs are actually sort of catchy and enjoyable, in the same way that it might be enjoyable to watch a small child keep trying to put together a puzzle by jamming the pieces together and then accidentally put two pieces together correctly. The hooks, when they are there, are usually sort of decent when they're not based solely on the riffs. Also, I love Alice in Chains and Metallica. Of course I would rather listen to them than this, but the influence is there and it makes for maybe two or three worthwhile songs on this album. It's not really bad to listen to, but you can't really apply any sort of critical thinking to this band. It's a dumb rock band. It's like the Hinder of Metal. Well, more like the Nickelback of metal- these guys aren't THAT bad. They're usually more "guilty" than "pleasure," but the odd song is fun to listen to.
However, there are two elements of this CD that need to be addressed that are distractingly bad and keep the CD from being good. The first are Sully's lyrics. Every single song is about either feeling tormented, dealing with a messed-up person, or feeling messed-up. Now, bands like Breaking Benjamin, that deal with this subject matter almost exclusively, can save it using a variety of terms, metaphors or styles to describe these feelings. Not so with Godsmack. Every song is painfully simple, or "direct" as the Godsmack fans may prefer to call it, in spelling out just what Sully Erna has to complain about. Even Staind does a better job than this. Granted, the lyrics are better than those on their self-titled debut ("I'm in a living hell, makes me wonder if I'm alive" and "Why is it every day that I feel the pain?" being some especially sophisticated excerpts) but they're still quite poor and could do with major improvement.
The other bad part is "I ***ing Hate You." That song is a joke. It sounds like it was included just to make the album explicit. It contains far more swearing than the rest of the album and there is no riff, hook or lyric that sticks in your head. No other song, other than the totally boring and unartistic "The Awakening," quite manages to achieve this level of mediocrity. The only reason anybody would remember this song, and it is pathetically obvious that Godsmack realized this, is the excessive swearing. I have no problem with swearing in music, but when it becomes the only identifiable element of a song... Seriously, maybe some Hot Topic kids might mosh to the refrain of "I ***ing hate you, you're such a liar," but the rest of us require something a bit more subtle and interesting.
Oh, and what is it with all these angst rock/metal bands these days referring to their persecutors as "you?" What happened to "he" or "she," or even taking on the role of the tormentor with "I?" They don't even have to refer to themselves as "I" either. They could use second person, or even third person provided it didn't get out of hand.
Overall, Faceless is an occasionally interesting CD that generally is boring, repetitive and derivative, and never shows any real musical inspiration or desire to improve upon either the patterns of Alice in Chains and Metallica or their own. Despite intermittent catchy moments, the fact remains that this record is devoid of creative skill, and should be treated as such. You can do much better than this, even if you wear AFI t-shirts and shop at Hot Topic. Not only is there far better music, there is far better metal and there is far better alt-metal. In fact, any subcategory Godsmack fits into, somebody within that subcategory does it better. Spare yourself and leave this, and the rest of Godsmack's music, where it belongs. I will not make this long review even longer by explaining where that would be.
