Some time in 2003, this band from around either Brisbane or the Sunshine Coast, Australia released this cd. I guess its a mini album. There are 8 songs spread over 22 tracks. 39 Minutes.
Put a * in their genre description as a wildcard, there is no single style of music here, it's more often that not heavy, but in hybrids of weird styles, or a strange hybrid of some more normal styles. These include: something like what Primus plays, industrial, minimalist, sci-fi, trip hop, dance, disco, ballad, rock, the music from Command & Conquer, circus music, nu metal, and yer usual experimental stuff.. and probably even more.
The theme of the cd is musical/artistic/thinking r/evolution, the music does reflect that... but too much. I think of the splitting of songs into several tracks as an excuse for their writing style which doesn't really know the word "flow".
Some of the lyrics make me cringe big time, and some are just completely wacked out, eg
"Watching freeze leave the stale mice, you're more dead"...
Just a solitary song review, or else there will be way too much to write:
The Chase is a fairly coherent piece, the first part (track 3) has a very watery, smooth-sci-fi-dance sound about it, and some pretty decent lyrics.
"Organise the world into conceptual categories, decorate the definitions, reaching all directions. Touch the limits, exceed the limit, erosion of boundaries. Give the competition an invitation. Move within the change, shift between the scenes".
The song builds on itself, doesn't change much at all in track 3. But after the seamless split (into track 4) it adds a bit of strange-time signatured disco and gradually builds more and more sci-finess about it along the way. The last minute cuts out all but the now strong sci-fi element and fuses it with a ballad sound to finish, which does sounds good as an ending, but the change from the previous part is too drastic, and it therefore sounds incomplete.
Overall, the music on here is very interesting, weird, and definitely breaking new ground, but they need a lot more coherence in their song construction to make it better. I dont want to say much about the lyrics, just that there are a few good lines in there. The highlights for me are The Chase, tracks 8/12/13 of Evacuate, Deviance, and some bits of Reaching Thru The Beyond.
The music is well played, and each member is good on the instruments, although the singer can't really hit bullseye (or even 25) on the longer held notes, but he has to play some interesting guitar at the same time so... forgiven.. a bit.
I'd give it a 10/10 for musical creativity if I broke it down piece by piece, but I have to take a lot off because of the lack of flow between these pieces, there are better ways to be progressive. Some of the lyrics don't help too much either.. and the bad grammar on the cover/inlay
but I give it 7/10 and I'm still very glad I got it.
Mr Bungle and Primus fans might like Sub Inc. Actually, a lot of people might, especially for the musical ideas. Anyone bored with the usual "alternative" music these days should at least give them a go.
They used to have a site with samples, but that is long gone sadly. You'll probably have to contact me in order to be able to hear some of this.
