Review Summary: Identity crisis strikes.
Toothgrinder is a band that’s gone through quite a change up in their lifespan. While showing some pretty good prog-metal flashes on their early work in
Schizophrenic Jubilee and
Nocturnal Masqurade, it appeared that Toothgrinder were going to make a splash in the metal scene and be “the next big thing” (anecdotally of course).
What came after
Nocturnal Masqurade was about as unexpected as anyone could have guessed with
Phantom Amour, which showed the band going into a bit more of an atmospheric, mainstream metal direction. The thing about that album was that, while being almost a complete 180 compared to what people thought it was going to be, it was still good. Different, but refreshing and well done. That brings us to
I AM, the newest album which shows the band leaning more towards that mainstream sound while still maintaining some of the early Toothgrinder sound.
The unfortunate reality of this album as a whole piece is that it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be, and is rather scattered and all over the place. Album opener “The Silence Of A Sleeping WASP” mixes sounds of
Nocturnal Masquerade in the verses and some of the instrumentation and
Phantom Amour in the chorus, and for the most part the song succeeds. The only detractor from this song is the “whoa-oh-oh”’s that are found throughout, but they don’t completely kill the song. The next song “ohmymy” is a song that was manufactured for the sake of being on the radio. The song itself is a simple verse-chorus structure with the chorus meant for singing along at live shows. That in and of itself is not all bad, but the dichotomy of the songs can be a bit jarring.
In many other songs, it seems the band tried to retain the heaviness that was found in
Nocturnal Masqurade while also trying to mix in the styles of
Phantom Amour, to varying degrees of success. When the band commits to one more than the other, they can pull it off. This is shown in songs like “No Tribe”, “The New Punk Rock” and “The Fire of June”. While the songs themselves are more mainstream than what’s found on
Nocturnal Masqurade, they still show that the band can write catchy, melodic hooks with some bite, but are mainly leaning towards one or the other for style of song they were attempting to write. The rest of the album however shows a bit more of the lackluster results that come from what appears to be almost an identity crisis.
Songs like “too soft for the scene, TOO MEAN FOR THE GREEN” (don’t get me started on some of these song titles), “shiVer” and “My Favorite Hurt” show some odd decisions in their process. “too soft…”, for example, seems to be trying to be heavy for no other reason than to be heavy. It certainly doesn’t help that the chorus of the song is just weird by itself. “shiVer” is nothing more than an electronic interlude with some drumming, and while not bad, isn’t really necessary, and “My Favorite Hurt” would be ten times better without the odd instrumental sounds going on post chorus. I’m not even sure what the sound is, but it takes what could be a passable song and kills it.
Luckily, the song “I AM” finds the band at their best. The poignant lyrics of addiction and the simple, yet effective, instrumentation craft what I consider the best song on the album. While instrumentally, it doesn’t touch
Nocturnal Masqurade, it doesn’t need to. The lyrics are what take the forefront with the instruments driving the song through, and it’s done very well.
All that being said...I find myself enjoying this album.
Phantom Amour had the same effect on me at first, and that album grew to be one of my favorites of 2017. I feel like this album is a good mix of what was on
Nocturnal Masqurade and
Phantom Amour, however it is unable to succeed at being as good as either of those albums were able to. This album has some good peaks, but the same amount of valleys to get through. It could grow on me, but as of right now, this ranks as their weakest release to date.
