Review Summary: 'Wrong time, wrong planet'?
Let's rewind back 5 years. It's November. I am 17 years old and about to see a band I have followed from early adolescence into my current adult life. I'm excited at the prospect of screaming lyrics I have known for years, and fully aware of how much of a goddamn fool I am probably about to make of myself. Elation fuels my teenage mind, however, and an attitude of '*** it' is about all I have to offer for anyone who may remember a not-so-tall youngster in glasses wearing braces, badly singing along to nearly each and every song to grace your wonderful ears. The event happens, and I am left with an extremely hoarse voice, less than spectacular hearing due to a well placed bass speaker pointed in my general direction for nearly 3 hours, and laughing my ass off at the poor guy who decided he was going to drink himself stupid and didn't show up for the cross country coach that would take me back to my home town, likely due to the fact we had heard he was thrown from the event for being drunk and disorderly barely 10 minutes into the gig.
That's not everything I took from this experience though.
I remember a supporting act who's name I barely caught before performing a handful of barely audible, lackluster songs. The bass is loud. Drums and synth are in abundance, and the majority of the vocals seem to be mostly unintelligible yelling. The crowd is less than thrilled regarding the appearance of this act before what they actually paid to see, and I witness for the very first time in my life the performance of a band going horribly, painfully wrong. At one point the vocalist awkwardly attempts to engage with the crowd in what I'm sure would have been a salivating, witty anecdote, but the audience is content to stare bleakly back at his ramblings before responding with a hearty "shut up" or "get off." I forget which one it was, but you get the idea. In the end, the band, in true rock n' roll fashion, jumps about a bit and the vocalist feebly attempts to smash a keyboard on the ground before security hurry on to escort them off. 20 minutes later the main act begins, and everybody's happy. On the long coach ride home I'm left to ponder the supporting band, and a kind of morbid curiosity strikes; the moment I get home I Google the supporting act and discover that they are none other than British electro-rock group, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, (a band title which seemed extremely appropriate at the time). A few song listens later I had a general idea of they sounded like when you could actually hear the songs, and noticed a new album was slated to drop pretty soon down the line.
Don't Say We Didn't Warn You, an album already so wonderfully obnoxious by title alone that any sliver of subtlety appeared to already be long gone, is the sophomore album Does It Offend You, Yeah? (or DIOYY) had to offer. On the surface the album appears to be nothing more than a harmless electro-rock album, but here and there are traces of something actually worth exploring. The problem is, most of this potential is squandered on stupendously over-the-top stabs in the dark, and the resulting product ends up trying to do far too much while also trying to not take itself too seriously. Tracks such as 'John Hurt' and 'The Monkeys are Coming' are prime examples of this, with the latter track being the most ridiculous thing on the album; whatever thinking went into producing the track, 'The Monkeys are Coming' either proves itself a stupidly catchy satirical masterpiece, or one of the worst electronic rock tracks ever to be produced. Grown men emitting monkey noises, while pratting around with bass and synthesisers, isn't exactly what one would describe as a 'blissful musical union.'
Tracks actually worth a second glance are almost completely smothered by the sheer magnitude of the album's ridiculousness, but they
are present; 'We Are The Dead' proves itself an effective mix of crooning over an acoustic guitar, before exploding into a massive stadium filling electronic extravaganza. 'The Knife' competently displays a well constructed piece of material, dwelling somewhere in between electro and alternative rock, harnessing huge choruses and 50s horror Sci-Fi synthesisers to a strangely stunning effect. Tracks that actually take themselves a little more seriously come in the form of 'Pull Out My Insides' and 'Wrong Time, Wrong Planet', both slower-tempo songs on the record that actually have an ounce of restraint or subtlety about them; the latter track in particular arguably being the best thing on the album, 'Wrong Time, Wrong Planet' is a massive breath of fresh air and a wonderfully dreamy 4 minute epic that proves DIOYY actually
do possess the ability to write a competent
song, without flicking on all the switches an electronic terminal may have to offer, and seeing which one makes the most jarring sound.
Overall,
Don't Say We Didn't Warn You has a certain ambition about it, yet it all comes across so convoluted and the album simply doesn't seem to know where or what it stands for, or what it wants to do. The production on the record is actually pretty sound in places, and the highlights do have their moments, but this is mostly hampered by a simple lack of consistency in quality and tone; if the album was established as an exercise in 'let's just make an arse of ourselves', as it does seem to be the case regarding tracks such as 'Wrestler' and 'Yeah', I'd accept that. The problem is,
Don't Say We Didn't Warn You yanks the listener back and forth so suddenly between genres it's hard to know exactly where you even stand half the time. This might be an intentional embellishment on what the album title implies, but if anything, it just ends up being ***ing frustrating. What's even more annoying is that you're still expected to take it slightly more seriously when it drops the silliness and tries to be, even going so far as to end the album with 'Broken Arms', a song pretentiously close to resembling an acoustic guitar ballad. This track probably could have some sort of an impact, were it not shortly after 'Wondering' projectile launched some of the most abrasive rapping you can imagine directly into your face.
