Review Summary: An unlikely diamond in the rough, as fun and unpretentious as they come.
Not gonna sugarcoat it, the underground nu metal scene is, for the most part, kind of a cesspool. The genre being one of the most short-lived ones in recent memory, not counting the current slight resurgence, a lot of the emerging artists curdled before reaching anything close to an interesting sound, let alone striking the precarious balance between edgy and fun. Looking through Internet music archives nowadays, one can see a long depressing list of bands with ridiculous deliberately misspelled names, whose release history amounts at best to a single half-baked album and at worst to a tiny collection of lo-fi demos.
And yet sometimes miracles happen.
Low Gear is a band from Dallas who have got a leg up on their peers by the mere fact that their music career, while relatively modest, amounts to a solid streak of 3 albums from 1998 to 2002, in the course of which they've been steadily delivering thick slabs of simplistic, yet memorable heavy sound. The music often borders on industrial metal - two chords is enough, three chords is jazz - but seldom gets boring or too repetitive, most of the songs not going beyond three and a half minutes, packing enough of a punch without dragging on too long. The resulting formula, largely the same during Low Gear's entire run, reminds me of Roots-era Sepultura or a slowed-down Static-X - a primal groove that's easy to get into, with the sound, the vocals and the lyrics forming a cartoonishly dark image which never takes itself too seriously, avoiding the kind of bleak edge that sunk a lot of promising bands in the genre.
Siktunes, the band's second album, is where this image really comes together. After an ominous intro, "Bloodworm", the first proper track, kicks into gear without hesitation, driven by a pulsing chugging rhythm, while the vocals paint a picture of surreal medical horror. The lyrics, while inessential for proper enjoyment of the album, are just the right kind of schizo - not trying to appeal to your inner Joker or something, but rather seemingly written in an uniterrupted stream of consciousness without looking back once, and this remains the case for most of the album. What really makes the album is their delivery - the vocals, although starting off clean and with a fair share of Korn-ish tics, soon adopt an impressive raspy roar not unlike that of Max Cavalera, although with more fry, giving the songs a voice unique enough to stand out and remain memorable after listening.
On "Scab Lab" the band slow down somewhat, starting the song off with a murky keyboard sample, before the guitar once again comes barreling through with a recurring whirring bend. The entire track is mechanical and relentless in the best kind of way, offset by the aforementioned sample. While the guitar and bass keep things simple, almost relegated to simply making rhythmic noise sometimes, the drumming invariably keeps the groove tight and varied with an occasional fill, switching to halftime and back and a generally high level of musicianship, especially shining on such tracks as "Hung", "It's My Train" and "You & Me". Another definite highlight is "Slug", once again a slower track, this time starting off with a melancholic clean melody for a change before it gets crushed by a thunderous half-step riff.
It's also worth noting some of the bonus tracks to the album, which are thankfully widely available these days along with the rest of the record. My personal favorites are "Tank", a rap metal track backed by a sampled beat that wouldn't feel out of place in some alternative 90's club, and featuring a guest verse that only further amplifies that impression. The song is just as cheesy as it is catchy and is a must-listen, if only for the novelty of the fusion. "Buy The Time", meanwhile, feels like the band's attempt at imitating techno with what sounds like either samples of their own drummer or his actual handiwork - in which case I'm doubly impressed - with very interesting results.
While in a narrow genre like nu metal any crumb of effort sometimes feels like a goldmine of genius, this album, as well as the band in general, do deserve recognition. Low Gear's sophomore album, while not reinventing the genre or something, manages to be fun, memorable and just as good on repeated listens. To those of us who have a high tolerance for tongue-in-cheek edge and groovy caveman riffs, I can't recommend this enough.
