Review Summary: Track Picks: Dead End Love, Prescription, 18, About My Summer, Face the Ashes. Note that there are also two bonus tracks on the iTunes and Japanese release! You are very much encouraged to listen to those as well.
Don't Call It a Comeback.
Thus read the message on Gob's myspace as of September 30, 2007. But any lost Gob fan who had heard the news had to question what else Gob's newly announced studio effort, Muertos Vivos, would be. Gob accompanied their brief website announcement with a new song, "Prescription". A basic enough Gob song, albeit a bit darker in meaning than what the Vancouver-based punks had sung four years earlier. The Gob scene was alive again, and fans were flooding the site with questions. What did Muertos Vivos mean? Was Prescription the lead single? Who was Tyson Maiko?
Gob had a lot more in store than what their loyal fanbase originally imagined. They open the album with two groundbreaking marching-band riot inducing songs, notably "We're All Dying" (the first single that featured a sinister music video). "War is a Cemetery" preaches its own title, while the snappy "Dead End Love" ranges from Tom Thacker on the cusp of insanity to pure insomnia.
This album sees a shift to an even darker mood than previously gimmicked in How Far Shallow Takes You and Foot In Mouth Disease. Featuring new bassist Tyson Maiko (Wood left the band due to electric guitar commitments with Avril Lavigne's touring band), Gob incorporate their mastered elements of punk rock and give them a new hard rock edge. The product is unfathomable. "Underground" is the perfect head-banger. Slow-moving gems like "Open Wounds" and "Still Feel Nothing" take a while to progress, but never fail to succeed at their climax--as do the psychedelic "About My Summer", "Face the Ashes" and the aforementioned "Dead in Love". Inevitably, there are lost traces of the old Gob to appease fans in "Prescription" and the lovestruck "18".
The final outcome is a great rock album, perhaps the best yet in 2007. Muertos Vivos has a mature Tom Thacker's fingerprints all over it, that listeners will be hard-pressed to note the lack of prominence in Theo Goutzinakis (he is not credited with any audible vocals, nor songs, pardoning "Face the Ashes"). Gob leave their mark on the music scene, regardless of them being overlooked by the mainstream media. They need not write new material for an extended period of time, as Muertos Vivos has something for everyone.
