Man, what a debacle we have here folks. A band that starts out as unclassifiable and beyond complex has reached this point in their career where they have crafted a less metallic, more dynamic piece of something close to alternative rock mixed with a whole lot of awesome. In fact, listening to the back catalogue has made me appreciate this album even more. Usually when bands change this drastically, fans abandon them and the band is left to metaphorically rot in the mainstream muck. This album represents the opposite, and what happens when a bunch of talented dudes grab a slab of unique and provocative attributes from their heads and splice their ideas into something that can only be described as special.
The main departure from their past is that the technicality of the instruments has decreased immensely. Thankfully this band doesn’t rely on showing off to have success, and the first song proves it. Opening with the American national anthem (haven’t figured out the significance of that yet), it breaks into a simple acoustic progression, following by a crash of distortion and soothing keyboards. The introduction of keyboards plays a huge part in the sound of this album. Actually, it’s difficult to explain intricacies between instruments. This album is like a symphony, in that it’s a sum of its parts that comes out as clashing brilliance that somehow flows together as smooth as a dolphin. One thing the band retained is their quirky fashion of making it impossible to predict what happens next, constantly maintaining something interesting.
While going through the record, it sounds like a band reborn…except born into a completely different field of music. There’s catchy choruses, catchy guitar lines, catchy bass lines…and at the same time they throw in random heavy sections, like in The Waitress In the Bar Orbiting Io, where after the first chorus you’re thrown into a massive wall of sound with high screams, but after the second you’re greeted with a happy jam riff...and then the screaming section. Another thing this band has added in, thanks again to the keyboards, are spacey/sci-fi breaks that are followed by lush guitar leads. Of course, I’m talking about Tall Ships On The Rocks. Listening to that song you find yourself swaying along the whole time. I’ve also just realized this would be a fantastic song to make out to.
It’s interesting how many settings the songs represent .The 90’s anthem feel of Kiss Judy Fly is a curve ball, but extremely enjoyable. The Measure Of Our Mile is a middle-eastern space rock love song, and Lovers In Flames is a song that most 90’s bands wish they could write, and with a catchy acoustic line and simple song structure why wasn’t this song on the radio? One reason could be that they were signed to Metal Blade…or maybe it’s because of this:
I’ll carve out my grandfather’s spine and turn it into a boat
Shove up the holes with my hands, and see if the vessel will float
Steer it into the waves with the devil at the rutter
I’ll carve out my grandfather’s spine and turn it into a boat
Oddly enough, you’ll find yourself singing along. Many of the lyrics on this album tend to deal with love and personal philosophies, but random enough to let everyone create their own interpretations.
If you mixed Killing Joke with mid-era Elvis Costello, you’d get something similar to this. I’ve made enough praises up to this point, and with that I must say that this record is just too long. In fact, everything after Hello Murder could have been cut because they are undoubtedly B-sides, and are rather uninteresting for the most part. Interstellar Fix, 2056 is kind of fun at first but drags on…and on. I blame the record company for putting the songs on; since this is the last album, they may have forced the band to put on everything they helped pay for. Also, not everyone will enjoy the vocals. Other than that, there are no real problems with this album. It’s executed with originality and emotion in a manner untouched by any other band. In fact, it is feasible to say this is one of the more important bands in recent memory. The band’s swan song is enough of an achievement to satisfy the fans and hopefully the band themselves, and any fan of music owes it to themselves to find the Thought Industry album(s) they can embrace.
